THEOSOPHICAL  MANUALS  No.  VII 


MAN  AND  HIS  BODIES 


ANNIE  BESANI 


BP  563  .M36  1917 

Besant,  Annie  Wood, 

1847- 

1933. 

Man  and  his  bodies 

V 

Theosophical  Manual  No.  VII. 


^^^Wvmh 


MAY  13  19 


/I 


t^a 


loemi  ses 


MAN  AND  HIS  BODIES 


ANNIE    BESANT.    , 


Theosophical    Publishing    House 

Krotona, 

Hollywood,  Los  Angeles.  Cal. 

1917 


PREFACE 


Fcio  words  are  needed  in  sending  this  little  took  out 
into  the  world.  It  is  the  seventh  of  a  series  of  Manuals 
designed  to  meet  the  public  demand  for  a  simple  expo- 
sition of  theosophical  teachings.  Some  have  complained 
that  our  literature  is  at  once  too  ahtruse,  too  technical, 
and  too  expensive,  for  the  ordinary  reader,  and  it  is  our 
hope  that  the  present  series  may  succeed  in  supplying 
what  is  a  very  real  want.  Theosophy  is  not  only  for  the 
learned;  it  is  for  all.  It  may  he  that  among  those  who 
in  these  little  hooJxS  catch  their  first  glimpse  of  its  teach- 
ings, there  may  he  a  few  who  will  he  led  hy  them  to  pene- 
trate more  deeply  into  its  philosophy,  its  science,  and  its 
religion,  facing  its  ahstruser  problems  with  the  student's 
zeal  and  the  neophyte's  ardour.  But  these  manuals  are 
not  written  for  the  eager  student,  whom  no  initial  diffi- 
culties can  daunt;  they  are  written  for  the  husy  men  and 
women  of  the  ivork-a-day  world,  and  seek  to  make  plain 
some  of  the  great  truths  that  render  life  easier  to  hear 
and  death  easier  to  face.  Written  hy  servanis  of  the 
Masters  who  are  the  Elder  Brothers  of  our  race,  they 
can  have  no  other  object  than  to  serve  our  fellow-men. 


MAN  AND  HIS  BODIES. 


Introduction 

So  much  confusion  exists  as  to  consciousness  and 
its  vehicles,  the  man  and  the  garments  that  he  wears, 
that  it  seems  expedient  to  place  before  theosophical 
students  a  plain  statement  of  the  facts  so  far  as  they 
are  known  to  us.  We  have  reached  a  point  in  our 
studies  at  which  much  that  was  at  first  obscure  has 
become  clear,  much  that  was  vague  has  become 
definite,  much  that  was  accepted  as  theory  has  become 
matter  of  first-hand  knowledge.  It  is  therefore  possible 
to  arrange  ascertained  facts  in  a  definite  sequence, 
facts  which  can  be  observed  again  and  again  as 
successive  students  develop  the  power  of  observation, 
and  to  speak  on  them  with  the  same  certainty  as  is 
felt  by  the  physicist  who  deals  with  other  observed  and 
tabulated  phenomena.  But  just  as  the  physicist  may 
err  so  may  the  metaphysicist,  and  as  knowledge  widens 
new  lights  are  thrown  on  old  facts,  their  relations  are 
more  clearly  seen,  and  their  appearance  changes — often 
because  the  further  light  shows  that  the  fact  which 
seemed  a  whole  was  only  a  fragment.  No  authority 
is  claimed  for    the    views    here    presented;     they    are 


offered  onh^  as  from  a  student  to  students,  as  an  effort 
to  reproduce  what  has  been  taught  but  has  doubtless 
been  very  imperfectly  apprehended,  together  with 
such  results  of  the  observations  of  pupils  as  their 
limited  powers  enable  them  to  make. 

At  the  outset  of  our  study  it  is  necessary  that  the 
western  reader  should  change  the  attitude  in  which  he 
has  been  accustomed  to  regard  himself,  and  that  he 
should  clearly  distinguish  between  the  man  and  the 
bodies  in  which  the  man  dwells.  We  are  too  much  in 
the  habit  of  identifying  ourselves  with  the  outer 
garments  that  we  wear,  too  apt  to  think  of  ourselves 
as  though  we  were  our  bodies;  and  it  is  necessary,  if 
we  are  to  grasp  a  true  conception  of  our  subject,  that 
we  shall  leave  this  point  of  view  and  shall  cease  to 
identify  ourselves  with  casings  that  we  put  on  for  a 
time  and  again  cast  off,  to  put  on  fresh  ones  when  we 
are  again  in  need  of  such  vestures.  To  identify  ourselves 
with  these  bodies  that  have  only  a  passing  existence 
is  really  as  foolish  and  as  unreasonable  as  it  wQuld  be 
to  identify  ourselves  with  our  clothes;  we  are  not 
dependent  on  them — their  value  is  in  proportion  to 
their  utility.  The  blunder  so  constantly  made  of 
identifying  the  consciousness,  which  is  our  Self,  with 
the  vehicles  in  which  that  consciousness  is  for  the 
moment  functioning,  can  only  be  excused  by  the 
fact  that  the  waking  consciousness,  and  to  some  extent 
the  dream  consciousness  also,  do  live  and  work  in  the 
body  and  are  not  known  apart  from  it  to  the  ordinary 
man;    yet  an    intellectual    understanding    of  the    real 


conditions  may  be  gained,  and  we  may  train  ourselves 
to  regard  our  Self  as  the  owner  of  his  vehicles;  and 
after  a  time  this  will  by  experience  become  for  us  a 
definite  fact,  when  we  learn  to  separate  our  Self  from 
his  bodies,  to  step  out  of  the  vehicle  and  to  know  that 
we  exist  in  a  far  fuller  consciousness  outside  it  than 
within  it,  and  that  we  are* in  no  sense  dependent  upon 
it;  when  that  is  once  achieved,  any  further  identi- 
fication of  our  Self  with  our  bodies  is  of  course 
impossible,  and  we  can  never  again  make  the  blunder 
of  supposing  that  we  are  what  we  wear.  The  clear 
intellectual  understanding  at  least  is  within  the  grasp 
of  all  of  us,  and  we  may  train  ourselves  in  the  habitual 
distinguishment  between  the  Self — the  man — and  his 
bodies;  even  to  do  this  is  to  step  out  of  the  illusion  in 
which  the  majority  are  wrapped,  and  changes  our 
whole  attitude  towards  life  and  towards  the  world, 
lifting  us  into  a  sterner  region  above  "the  changes 
and  chances  of  this  mortal  life,"  placing  us  above  the 
daily  petty  troubles  which  loom  so  largely  to  em- 
bodied consciousness,  showing  us  the  true  proportion 
between  the  everchanging  and  the  relatively  permanent, 
and  making  us  feel  the  difference  between  the  drown- 
ing man  tossed  and  buffeted  by  the  waves  that 
smother  him,  and  the  man  whose  feet  are  on  a  rock 
while  the  surges  break  harmlessly  at  its  base. 

By  man  I  mean  the  living,  conscious,  thinking  Self, 
the  individual;  by  bodies,  the  various  casings  in 
which  this  Self  is  enclosed,  each  casing  enabling  the 
Self  to  function  in  some  definite  region  of  the  universe. 


8 


As  a  man  might  use  a  carriage  on  the  land,  a  ship  on 
the  water,  a  balloon  in  the  air,  to  travel  from  one 
place  to  another,  and  yet  in  all  places  remain  himself, 
so  does  the  Self,  the  real  man,  remain  himself  no 
matter  in  what  body  he  is  functioning ;  and  as 
carriage,  ship,  and  balloon  vary  in  materials  and 
arrangement  according  to  the  element  in  which  each 
is  destined  to  move,  so  does  each  body  vary  according 
to  the  environment  in  which  it  is  to  act.  One  is 
grosser  than  another,  one  shorter-lived  than  another, 
one  has  fewer  capacities  than  another;  but  all  have 
this  in  common— that  relatively  to  the  man  they  are 
transient,  his  instruments,  his  servants,  wearing  out 
and  renewed  according  to  their  nature,  and  adapted 
to  his  varying  needs,  his  growing  powers.  We  will 
study  them  one  by  one,  beginning  with  the  lowest, 
and  then  take  the  man  himself,  the  actor  in  all  the 
])odies. 


The  Physical  Body 

Under  the  term  physical  body  must  be  included  the 
two  lower  principles  of  man — called  in  our  old  termin- 
ology the  Sthula  Sharira  and  Linga  Sharira — since 
they  both  function  on  the  physical  plane,  are  com- 
posed of  physical  matter,  are  formed  for  the  period 
of  one  phj^sical  life,  are  cast  off  by  the  man  at  death, 
and  disintegrate  together  in  the  physical  world  when 
he  passes  on  into  the  astral. 

Another  reason  for  classing  these  two  principles  as 
our  physical  body  or  physical  vehicle,  is  that  so  long 
as  we  cannot  pass  out  of  the  physical  world  —  or 
plane,  as  we  are  accustomed  to  call  it — we  are  using 
one  or  other  or  both  of  these  physical  vestures;  they 
both  belong  to  the  physical  plane  by  their  materials, 
and  cannot  pass  outside  it;  consciousness  working  in 
them  is  bound  within  their  physical  limitations,  and 
is  subject  to  the  ordinary  laws  of  space  and  time. 
Although  partially  separable,  they  are  rarely  separated 
during  earthly  life,  and  such  separation  is  inadvisable, 
and  is  always  a  sign  of  disease  or  of  ill-balanced 
constitution. 

They  are  distinguishable  by  the  materials  of  which 
they  are  composed  into  the  gross  body  and  the  etheric 
double,  the  latter  being  the  exact  duplicate  of  the 
visible  body,  particle  for  particle,  and  the  medium 
through  which  play  all  the  electrical  and  vital  currents 


10 


on  which  the  activity  of  the  body  depends.  This 
etheric  double  was  formerly  called  the  Linga 
Sharira,  but  it  seemed  advisable,  for  several  reasons,  to 
put  an  end  to  the  use  of  the  name  in  this  relation. 
''Linga  Sharira"  has  from  time  immemorial  been 
used  in  Hindu  books  in  another  sense,  and  much 
confusion  arose  among  students  of  Eastern  literature, 
whether  Easterns  or  "Westerns,  in  consequence  of  its 
arbitrary  wresting  from  its  recognized  meaning;  for 
this  reason,  if  for  no  other,  it  is  well  to  sur- 
render its  improper  use.  Further,  it  is  better  to 
have  English  names  for  the  subdivisions  of  the  human 
constitution,  and  thus  remove  from  our  elementary 
literature  the  stumbling-block  to  beginners  of  a 
Sanskrit  terminology.  Also,  the  name  etheric  double 
exactly  expresses  the  nature  and  constitution  of  the 
subtler  portion  of  the  physical  body,  and  is  thus 
significant  and  therefore  eas.y  to  remember,  as  every 
name  should  be ;  it  is  ' '  etheric, ' '  because  made  of 
ether,  ''double"  because  an  exact  duplicate  of  the 
gross  body — its  shadow,  as  it  were. 

Now  physical  matter  has  seven  subdivisions, 
distinguishable  from  each  other,  and  each  showing  a 
vast  variety  of  combinations  within  its  own  limits. 
The  subdiAdsions  are :  solid,  liquid,  gas,  ether,  the 
latter  having  four  conditions  as  distinct  from  each 
other  as  liquids  are  distinct  from  solids  and  gases. 
These  are  the  seven  states  of  physical  matter,  and  any 
portion  of  such  matter  is  capable  of  passing  into  any 
one    of    these    states,   although    under    what    we    call 


11 


normal  temperature  and  pressure  it  will  assume  one 
or  other  of  these  as  its  relatively  permanent  condition, 
as  gold  is  ordinarily  solid,  water  is  ordinarily  liquid 
and  chlorine  is  ordinarily  gaseous.  The  physical  body  of 
man  is  composed  of  matter  in  these  seven  states — the 
gross  body  consisting  of  solids,  liquids,  and  gases,  and 
the  e'theric  double  of  the  four  subdivisions  of  ether, 
known  respectively  as  Ether  I.,  Ether  II.,  Ether  III., 
and  Ether  IV. 

When  the  higher  theosophical  truths  are  put  before 
people,  we  find  them  constantly  complaining  that 
they  are  too  much  in  the  clouds,  and  asking:  ''Where 
ought  we  to  begin?  If  we  want  to  learn  for  ourselves 
and  prove  the  truth  of  the  assertions  made,  how  are 
we  to  start?  What  are  the  first  steps  that  we  should 
take?  What,  in  fact,  is  the  alphabet  of  this  language 
in  which  Theosophists  discourse  so  glibly?  What 
ought  we  to  do,  we  men  and  women  living  in  the 
world,  in  order  to  understand  and  verify  these  matters, 
instead  of  merely  taking  them  on  trust  from  others 
who  say  they  know?"  I  am  going  to  try  to  answer 
that  question  in  the  following  pages,  so  that  those 
who  are  really  in  earnest  may  see  the  earlier  practical 
steps  they  ought  to  take — it  being  always  understood 
that  these  steps  must  belong  to  a  life  the  moral, 
intellectual,  and  spiritual  parts  of  which  are  also  under 
training.  Nothing  that  a  man  can  do  to  the  physical 
body  alone  will  turn  him  into  a'  seer  or  a  saint;  but 
it  is  also  true  that  inasmuch  as  the  body  is  an 
instrument  that  we  have  to  use,  certain  treatment  of 


12 


the  body  is  necessary  in  order  that  we  may  turn  our 
footsteps  in  the  direction  of  the  Path;  while  dealing 
with  the  body  only  will  never  take  us  to  the  heights 
to  which  we  aspire,  still  to  let  the  body  alone  will 
make  it  impossible  for  us  to  scale  those  heights  at  all. 
The  bodies  in  which  he  has  to  live  and  work  are  the 
instruments  of  the  man,  and  the  very  first  thing  we 
have  to  realize  is  this:  that  the  body  exists  for  us, 
not  we  for  the  body;  the  body  is  ours  to  use — we  do 
not  belong  to  it  to  be  used  by  it.  The  body  is  an 
instrument  which  is  to  be  refined,  to  be  improved,  to 
be  trained,  to  be  moulded  into  such  form  and  made 
of  such  constituents  as  may  best  fit  it  to  be  the 
instrument  on  the  physical  plane  for  the  highest  pur- 
poses of  the  man.  Everything  which  tends  in  that  di- 
rection is  to  be  encouraged  and  cultivated;  everything 
which  goes  contrary  to  it  is  to  be  avoided.  It  does  not 
matter  what  wishes  the  body  may  have,  what  habits  it 
may  have  contracted  in  the  past;  the  body  is  ours,  our 
servant,  to  be  employed  as  we  desire,  and  the  moment 
it  takes  the  reins  into  its  own  hands  and  claims  to  guide 
the  man  instead  of  being  guided  by  the  man,  at  that 
moment  the  whole  purpose  of  life  is  subverted,  and  any 
kind  of  progress  is  rendered  utterly  impossible.  Here 
is  the  point  from  which  any  person  who  is  in  earnest 
must  start.  The  very  nature  of  the  physical  body 
makes  it  a  thing  which  can  be  turned  fairly  easily  into 
a  servant  or  an  instrument.  It  has  certain  peculiarities 
which  help  us  in  training  it  and  make  it  comparatively 
easy  to  guide  and  mould,  and  one  of  these  peculiarities 


13 


is-  that  when  once  it  has  been  accustomed  to  work  along 
particular  lines  it  will  very  readily  continue  to  follow 
those  lines  of  its  own  accord,  and  will  be  quite  as  happy 
in  doing  so  as  it  was  previously  in  going  along  others. 
If  a  bad  habit  has  been  acquired,  the  body  will  make 
considerable  resistance  to  any  change  in  that  habit; 
but  if  it  be  compelled  to  alter,  if  the  obstacle  it  places 
in  the  way  be  overcome,  and  if  it  be  forced  to. act  as  the 
man  desires,  then  after  a  short  time  the  body  will  of 
its  own  accord  repeat  the  new  habit  that  the  man  has 
imposed  on  it,  and  will  as  contentedly  pursue  the  new 
method  as  it  pursued  the  old  one  to  which  the  man  found 
reason  to  object. 

Let  us  now  turn  to  the  consideration  of  the  dense 
body  that  we  may  roughly  call  the  visible  part  of  the 
physical  body,  though  the  gaseous  constituents  are 
not  visible  to  the  untrained  physical  eye.  This  is  the 
most  outward  garment  of  the  man,  his  lowest  mani- 
festation, his  most  limited  and  imperfect  expression 
of  himself. 

The  Dense  Body. — We  must  delay  sufficiently  long 
on  the  constitution  of  the  body  to  enable  us  to  under- 
stand how  it  is  that  we  can  take  this  body,  purify  it,  and 
train  it ;  we  must  glance  at  a  set  of  activities  whicli  are 
for  the  most  part  outside  the  control  of  the  will,  and 
then  at  those  which  are  under  that  control.  Both  of 
these  work  by  means  of  nervous  systems,  but  by 
nervous  systems  of  different  kinds.  One  carries  on 
all  the  activities  of  the  body  which  maintain  its 
ordinary  life,  by  which  the  lungs  contract,  by  which  the 


14 


heart  pulsates,  by  which  the  movements  of  the  digestive 
S3^stem  are  directed.  This  is  composed  of  the  invol- 
untary nerves,  commonly  called  the  ''sympathic 
system."  At  one  time  during  the  long  past  of 
physical  evolution  during  which  our  bodies  were  built, 
this  system  was  under  the  control  of  the  animal  possess- 
ing it,  but  gradually  it  began  to  work  automatically — 
it  passed  away  from  the  control  of  the  will,  took  on 
its  own  quasi-independence  and  carried  on  all  the  nor- 
mal vital  activities  of  the  body.  While  a  person  is  in 
health  he  does  not  notice  these  activities ;  he  knows  that 
he  breathes  when  the  breathing  is  oppressed  or  checked, 
he  knows  that  his  heart  beats  when  the  beating  is  vio- 
lent or  irregular,  but  when  all  is  in  order  these  processes 
go  on  unnoticed.  It  is,  however,  possible  to  bring  the 
sjonpathetic  nervous  system  under  the  control  of  the  will 
by  long  and  painful  practice,  and  a  class  of  Yogis  in 
India — Hatha  Yogis,  they  are  called — develop  this  pow- 
er to  an  extraordinary  degree,  with  the  object  of  stimu- 
lating the  lower  psychic  faculties.  It  is  possible  to 
evolve  these  (without  any  regard  to  spiritual,  moral, 
or  intellectual  growth)  by  direct  action  on  the  physical 
body.  The  Hatha  Yogi  learns  to  control  his  breathing, 
even  to  the  point  of  suspension  for  a  considerable 
period,  to  control  the  beating  of  his  heart,  quickening 
or  retarding  the  circulation  at  will,  and  by  these  means 
to  throw  the  physical  body  into  a  trance  and  set  free 
the  astral  body.  The  method  is  not  one  to  be 
emulated;  but  still  it  is  instructive  for  western  nations 
(who  are  apt  to  regard  the  body  as  of  such  imperative 


15 


nature)  to  know  liow  thoroughly  a  man  can  bring 
under  his  control  these  normally  automatic  physical 
processes,  and  to  realize  that  thousands  of  men  impose 
on  themselves  a  long  and  exquisitely  painful  discipline 
in  order  to  set  themselves  free  from  the  prison-house 
of  the  physical  body,  and  to  know  that  they  live  when 
the  animation  of  the  body  is  suspended.  They  are  at 
least  in  earnest,  and  are  no  longer  the  mere  slaves  of 
the  senses. 

Passing  from  this  we  have  the  voluntary  nervous 
system,  one  far  more  important  for  our  mental  pur- 
poses. This  is  the  great  system  which  is  our  instrument 
of  thought,  by  which  we  feel  and  move  on  the  physical 
plane.  It  consists  of  the  cerebro-spinal  axis — the  brain 
and  spinal  cord — whence  go  to  every  part  of  the  body 
filaments  of  nervous  matter,  the  sensory  and  motor 
nerves — the  nerves  by  which  we  feel  running  from  the 
periphery  to  the  axis,  and  the  nerves  by  which  we  move 
running  from  the  axis  to  the  periphery.  From  every 
part  of  the  body  the  nerve-threads  run,  associating  with 
each  other  to  make  bundles,  these  proceeding  to  join 
the  spinal  cord,  forming  its  external  fibrous  substance, 
and  passing  upwards  to  spread  out  and  ramify  in  the 
brain,  the  centre  of  all  feeling  and  all  purposive  motion 
controllable  by  the  will.  This  is  the  system  through 
which  the  man  expresses  his  will  and  his  consciousness, 
and  these  may  be  said  to  be  seated  in  the  brain.  The 
man  can  do  nothing  on  the  physical  plane  except 
through  the  brain  and  nervous  system;  if  these  be  out 
of  order,  he  can  no  longer  express  himself  in  orderly 


16 


fashion.  Here  is  the  fact  on  which  materialism  has 
based  its  contention  that  thought  and  brain-action  vary 
together ;  dealing  with  the  physical  plane  only,  as  the 
materialist  is  dealing,  they  do  vary  together,  and  it  is 
necessary  to  bring  in  forces  from  another  plane,  the 
astral,  in  order  to  show  that  thought  is  not  the  result 
of  nervous  action.  If  the  brain  be  aifected  by  drugs, 
or  by  disease,  or  by  injury,  the  thought  of  the  man  to 
whom  the  brain  belongs  can  no  longer  find  its  due  ex- 
pression on  the  physical  plane.  The  materialist  will 
also  point  out  that  if  you  have  certain  diseases,  thought 
will  be  peculiarly  affected.  There  is  a  rare  disease, 
aphasia,  which  destroys  a  particular  part  of  the  tissue 
of  the  brain,  near  the  ear,  and  is  accompanied  by  a 
total  loss  of  memory  so  far  as  words  are  concerned;  if 
you  ask  a  person  who  is  suffering  from  this  disease  a 
question,  he  cannot  answer  you ;  if  you  ask  him  his  name, 
he  will  give  you  no  reply;  but  if  you  speak  his  name, 
he  will  show  recognition  of  it,  if  you  read  him.  some, 
statement  he  will  signify  assent  or  dissent;  he  is  able 
to  think  but  unable  to  speak.  It  seems  as  though  the 
part  of  the  brain  that  has  been  eaten  away  were  con- 
nected with  the  physical  memory  of  words,  so  that  with 
the  loss  of  that  the  man  loses  on  the  physical  plane  the 
memory  of  words  and  is  rendered  dumb,  while  he  retains 
the  power  of  thought  and  can  agree  or  disagree  with 
any  proposition  made.  The  materialistic  argument  at 
once  breaks  down,  of  course,  when  the  man  is  set  free 
from  his  imperfect  instrument :  he  is  then  able  to  mani- 
fest his  powers,  though  he  is  again  crippled  when  re- 


17 

diiced  once  more  to  physical  expression.  The  import- 
ance of  this  as  regards  our  present  enquiry  lies  not  in 
the  validity  or  invalidity  of  the  materialistic  position, 
but  in  the  fact  that  the  man  is  limited  in  his  expression 
on  the  physical  plane  by  the  capabilities  of  his  physical 
instrument,  and  that  this  instrument  is  susceptible^  to 
physical  agents ;  if  these  can  injure  it,  they  can  also  im- 
prove it— a  consideration  which  we  shall  find  to  be  of 
vital  importance  to  us. 

These  nervous  systems,  like  every  part  of  the  body, 
are  built  up  of  cells,  small  definite  bodies,  with  enclos- 
ing wall  and  contents,  visible  under  the  microscope,  and 
modified  according  to  their  various  functions ;  these  cells 
in  their  turn  are  made  up  of  small  molecules,  and  these 
again  of  atoms— the  atoms  of  the  chemist,  each  atom 
being  his  ultimate  indivisible  particle  of  a  chemical  ele- 
ment. These  chemical  atoms  combine  together  in  in- 
numerable ways  to  form  the  gases,  the  liquids,  and  the 
solids  of  the  dense  body.  Each  chemical  atom  is  to  the 
Theosophist  a  living  thing,  capable  of  leading  its  in- 
dependent life,  and  each  combination  of  such  atoms  into 
a  more  complex  being  is  again  a  living  thing ;  also  each 
cell  has  a  life  of  its  own,  and  all  these  chemical  atoms 
and  molecules  and  cells  are  combined  together  into  an 
organic  whole,  a  body,  to  serve  as  vehicle  of  a  loftier 
form  of  consciousness  than  any  which  they  know  m  their 
separated  lives.  Now  the  particles  of  which  these 
bodies  are  composed  are  constantly  coming  and  going, 
these  particles  being  aggregations  of  chemical  atoms 
too  minute  to  be  visible  to  the  naked  eye,  though  many 


18 


of  them  are  visible  under  the  microscope.  If  a  little 
blood  be  put  under  the  microscope  we  see  moving  in  it 
a  number  of  living  bodies,  the  white  and  red  corpuscles, 
the  white  being  closely  similar  in  structure  and  activity 
to  ordinary  amoebag;  in  connection  with  many  diseases 
microbes  are  found,  baccilli  of  various  kinds,  and 
scientists  tell  us  that  we  have  in  our  bodies  friendly 
and  unfriendly  microbes,  some  that  injure  us  and  others 
that  pounce  upon  and  devour  deleterious  intruders  and 
effete  matter.  Some  microbes  come  to  us  from  without 
that  ravage  our  bodies  with  disease,  others  that  pro- 
mote their  health,  and  so  these  garments  of  ours  are  con- 
tinually changing  their  materials,  which  come  and  stay 
for  awhile,  and  go  away  to  form  parts  of  other  bodies — 
a  continual  change  and  interplay. 

Now  the  vast  majority  of  mankind  know  little  and 
care  less  for  these  facts,  and  yet  on  them  hinges  the  pos- 
sibility of  the  purification  of  the  dense  body,  thus  ren- 
dering it  a  fitter  vehicle  for  the  indwelling  of  man.  The 
ordinary  person  lets  his  body  build  itself  up  anyhow  out 
of  the  materials  supplied  to  it,  without  regard  to  their 
nature,  caring  only  that  they  shall  be  palatable  and 
agreeable  to  his  desires,  and  not  whether  they  may  be 
suitable  or  unsuitable  to  the  making  of  a  pure  and  noble 
dwelling  for  the  Self,  the  true  man  that  liveth  for  ever- 
more. He  exercises  no  supervision  over  these  particles 
as  they  come  and  go,  selecting  none,  rejecting  none,  but 
letting  everything  build  itself  in  as  it  lists,  like  a  care- 
less mason  who  should  catch  up  any  rubbish  as  material 
for  his  house,  floating  wool  and  hairs,  mud,  chips,  sand, 


19 


nails,  offal,  filth  of  any  kind — the  veriest  jerry-builder 
is  the  ordinary  man  with  his  body.  The  purifying  of 
the  dense  body  will  then  consist  in  a  process  of  deliberate 
selection  of  the  particles  permitted  to  compose  it;  the 
man  will  take  into  it  in  the  way  of  food  the  purest  con- 
stituents he  call  obtain,  rejecting  the  impure  and  the 
gross;  he  knows  that  by  natural  change  the  particles 
built  into  it  in  the  days  of  his  careless  living  will  grad- 
ually pass  away,  at  least  within  seven  years — though 
the  process  may  be  considerably  hastened — and  he  re- 
solves to  build  in  no  more  that  are  unclean;  as  he  in- 
creases the  pure  constituents  he  makes  in  his  body  an 
army  of  defenders,  that  destroy  any  foul  particles  that 
may  fall  upon  it  from  without  or  enter  it  without  his 
consent ;  and  he  guards  it  further  by  an  active  will  that 
it  shall  be  pure,  which,  acting  magnetically,  continually 
drives  away  from  his  vicinity  all  unclean  creatures  that 
would  fain  enter  his  body,  and  thus  shields  it  from  the 
inroads  to  which  it  is  liable  while  living  in  an  atmos- 
phere impregnated  with  uncleannesses  of  every  kind. 

When  a  man  thus  resolves  to  purify  the  body  and 
to  make  it  into  an  instrument  fit  for  the  Self  to  work 
with,  he  takes  the  first  step  towards  the  practice  of 
Yoga — a  step  which  must  be  taken  in  this  or  in  some 
other  life  before  he  can  seriously  ask  the  question,  ' '  How 
can  I  learn  to  verify  for  myself  the  truths  of  Theoso- 
ophy?"  All  personal  verification  of  super-physical 
facts  depends  on  the  complete  subjection  of  the  physi- 
cal body  to  its  owner,  the  man;  he  has  to  do  the  verifi- 
cation, and  he  cannot  do  it  while  he  is  fast  bound  within 


20 


the  prison  of  the  body,  or  while  that  body  is  impure. 
Even  should  he  have  brought  over  from  better-disci- 
plined lives  partially-developed  physic  faculties,  which 
show  themselves  despite  present  unfavourable  circum- 
stances, the  use  of  these  will  be  hampered  when  he  is 
in  the  physical  body,  if  that  body  be  impure ;  it  will  dull 
or  distort  the  exercise  of  the  faculties  when  they  play 
tlu'ough  it,  and  render  their  reports  untrustworthy. 

Let  us  suppose  that  a  man  deliberately  chooses  that 
he  will  have  a  pure  body,  and  that  he  either  takes  ad- 
vantage of  the  fact  that  his  body  completely  changes  in 
seven  years,  or  prefers  the  shorter  and  more  difficult 
path  of  changing  it  more  rapidly — in  either  case  he  will 
begin  at  once  to  select  the  materials  from  which  the  new 
clean  body  is  to  be  built,  and  the  question  of  diet  will  pre- 
sent itself.  He  will  immediately  begin  to  exclude  from 
his  food  all  kinds  which  will  build  into  his  body  particles 
which  are  impure  and  polluting.  He  will  strike  off  all  al- 
cohol, and  every  liquor  which  contains  it,  because  that 
brings  into  his  physical  body  microbes  of  the  most  impure 
kinds,  products  of  decomposition ;  these  are  not  only 
offensive  in  themselves,  but  they  attract  towards  them- 
selves— and  therefore  towards  any  body  of  which  they 
form  part — some  of  the  most  objectionable  of  the  phy- 
sically invisible  inhabitants  of  the  next  plane.  Drunk- 
ards who  have  lost  their  physical  bodies,  and  can  there- 
fore no  longer  satisfy  their  longing  for  intoxicants,  hang 
round  places  where  drink  is  taken,  and  round  those  who 
take  it,  endeavouring  to  push  themselves  into  the  bodies 
of  people  who  are  drinking  and  thus  to  share  the  low 


21 


pleasure  to  which  they  surrender  themselves.  Women 
of  refinement  would  shrink  from  their  wines  if  they 
could  see  the  loathly  creatures  who  seek  to  partake  in 
their  enjoyment,  and  the  close  connection  which  they 
thus  set  up  with  beings  of  the  most  repellent  type.  Evil 
elementals  also  cluster  round,  the  thoughts  of  drunkards 
clad  in  elemental  essence,  while  the  physical  body  at- 
tracts to  itself  from  the  surrounding  atmosphere  other 
gross  particles  given  off  from  drunken  and  profligate 
bodies,  and  these  also  are  built  into  it,  coarsening  and 
degrading  it.  If  we  look  at  people  who  are  constantly 
engaged  with  alcohol,  in  manufacturing  or  distributing 
spirits,  wines,  beers,  and  other  kinds  of  unclean  liquors, 
we  can  see  physically  how  their  bodies  have  become 
gross  and  coarse.  A  brewer's  man,  a  publican — to  say 
nothing  of  persons  in  all  ranks  of  society  who  drink  to 
excess — these  show  fully  what  every  one  who  builds  in- 
to his  body  any  of  these  particles  is  doing  in  part  and 
slowly ;  the  more  of  these  he  builds  in  the  coarser  will 
his  body  become.  And  so  with  other  articles  of  diet, 
flesh  of  mammals,  birds,  reptiles,  and  fish,  with  that  of 
crustaceous  creatures  and  molluscs  which  feed  on  car- 
rion— how  should  bodies  made  of  such  materials  be  re- 
fined, sensitive,  delicately  balanced  and  yet  perfectly 
healthy,  with  the  strength  and  fineness  of  tempered 
steel,  such  as  the  man  needs  for  all  the  higher  kinds  of 
work  ?  Is  it  necessary,  again  to  add  the  practical  lesson 
that  may  be  learned  by  looking  at  the  bodies  of  those 
living  in  such  surroundings?  See  the  slaughterman 
and  the  butcher,  and  judge  if  their  bodies  look  like  the 


22 


fittest  instruments  for  employment  on  high  thoughts 
and  lofty  spiritual  themes.  Yet  they  are  only  the  highly 
finished  product  of  the  forces  that  work  proportionately 
in  all  bodies  that  feed  on  the  impure  viands  they  supply. 
True,  no  amount  of  attention  paid  to  the  physical 
body  by  the  man  Avill  of  itself  give  him  spiritual  life, 
but  why  should  he  hamper  himself  with  an  impure  body  ? 
why  should  he  allow  his  powers,  whether  great  or  small, 
to  be  limited,  thwarted,  dwarfed  in  their  attempts  to 
manifest  by  this  needlessly  imperfect  instrument? 

There  is,  however,  one  difficulty  in  our  way  that  we 
cannot  overlook ;  we  may  take  a  good  deal  of  pains  with 
the  body  and  may  resolutely  refuse  to  befoul  it,  but  we 
are  living  among  people  who  are  careless  and  who  for 
the  most  part  know  nothing  of  these  facts  in  nature. 
In  a  city  like  London,  or  indeed  in  any  western  town, 
we  cannot  walk  through  the  streets  without  being  of- 
fended at  every  turn,  and  the  more  we  refine  the  body 
the  more  delicately  acute  do  the  physical  senses  become, 
and  the  more  we  must  suffer  in  a  civilization  so  coarse 
and  animal  as  is  the  present.  Walking  through  the 
poorer  and  the  business  streets  where  there  are  beer- 
houses at  every  corner,  we  can  scarcely  ever  escape  the 
smell  of  drink,  the  effluvium  from  one  drinking  place 
over-lapping  that  from  the  next — even  reputedly  re- 
spectable streets  being  thus  poisoned;  so,  too,  we  have 
to  pass  slaughter-houses  and  butchers'  shops.  Of  course 
one  knows  that  when  civilization  is  a  little  more  ad- 
vanced better  ari-angements  will  be  made,  and  some- 
thing will  be  gained  when  all  these  unclean  things  are 


23 


gathered  in  special  quarters  where  those  can  seek  them 
who  want  them.  But  meanwhile  particles  from  these 
places  fall  on  our  bodies,  and  we  breathe  them  in  with 
the  air.  But  as  the  normalh^  healthy  body  gives  no  soil 
in  which  disease-microbes  can  germinate,  so  the  clean 
body  offers  no  soil  in  which  these  impure  particles  can 
grow.  Besides,  as  we  have  seen,  there  are  armies  of 
living  creatures  that  are  always  at  work  keeping  our 
blood  pure,  and  these  regiments  of  true  lifeguards  will 
charge  down  upon  any  poisonous  particles  that  come  into 
the  city  of  a  pure  body  and  will  destroy  them  and  cut 
them  to  pieces.  For  us  it  is  to  choose  whether  we  will 
have  in  our  blood  these  defenders  of  life,  or  whether  we 
will  people  it  with  the  pirates  that  plunder  and  slay  the 
good.  The  more  resolutel}^  we  refuse  to  put  into  the 
body  anything  that  is  unclean,  the  more  shall  we  be 
fortified  against  attacks  from  without. 

Reference  has  already  been  made  to  the  automatism 
of  the  body,  to  the  fact  that  it  is  a  creature  of  habit  and 
I  said  that  use  could  be  made  of  this  peculiarity.  If 
the  Theosophist  says  to  some  aspirant  who  would  fain 
practice  Yoga  and  win  entrance  to  higher  planes  of 
being:  "You  must  then  begin  at  once  to  purify  the  body, 
and  this  must  precede  the  attempt  to  practice  any  Yoga 
worthy  of  the  name ;  for  real  Yoga  is  as  dangerous  to 
an  impure  and  undisciplined  body  as  a  match  to  a  cask 
of  gunpowder ; "  if  the  Theosophist  should  thus  speak,  he 
would  very  probably  be  met  with  the  ansvx^er  that  health 
would  suffer  if  such  a  course  were  to  be  adopted.  As 
a  dry  matter  of  fact  the  body  does  not  very  much  care 


24 


in  the  long  run  what  3^011  give  it,  provided  that  you  give 
it  something  that  will  keep  it  in  health ;  and  it  will  ac- 
commodate itself  in  a  short  time  to  any  form  of  pure 
and  nutritious  food  that  you  choose  to  adopt.  Just  be- 
cause it  is  an  automatic  creature,  it  will  soon  stop  ask- 
ing for  things  that  are  steadily  withheld  from  it,  and  if 
you  disregard  its  demands  for  the  coarser  and  ranker 
kinds  of  food  it  will  soon  get  into  the  habit  of  disliking 
them.  Just  as  even  a  moderately  natural  palate  will 
shrink  with  a  sickening  feeling  of  disgust  from  decay- 
ing game  and  venison  yclept  ''high,"  so  a  pure  taste 
will  revolt  against  all  coarse  foods.  Suppose  that  a  man 
has  been  feeding  his  body  with  various  kinds  of  unclean 
things,  his  body  will  demand  them  imperiously,  and  h© 
will  be  inclined  to  yield  to  it ;  but  if  he  pays  no  attention 
to  it,  and  goes  his  own  way  and  not  the  way  of  the  body, 
he  will  find,  perhaps  to  his  surprise,  that  his  body  will 
soon  recognize  its  master  and  will  accommodate  itself  to 
his  orders;  presently  it  will  begin  to  prefer  the  things 
that  he  gives  it,  and  will  set  up  a  liking  for  clean  foods 
and  a  distaste  for  unclean.  Habit  can  be  used  for  help 
as  well  as  for  hindrance,  and  the  body  yields  when  it 
understands  that  you  are  the  master  and  that  you  do 
not  intend  the  purpose  of  your  life  to  be  interfered  with 
by  the  mere  instrument  that  is  yours  for  use.  The 
truth  is  that  it  is  not  the  body  which  is  chiefly  in  fault, 
but  Kama,  the  desire-nature.  The  adult  body  has  got 
into  the  habit  of  demanding  particular  things,  but  if  you 
notice  a  child,  you  will  find  that  the  child's  body  does 
not  spontaneously  make   demands  for    the    things    on 


25 


which  adult  bodies  feast  with  coarse  pleasure ;  the  child's 
body,  unless  it' has  a  very  bad  physical  heredity,  shrinks 
from  meat  and  wine,  but  its  elders  force  meat  on  it,  and 
the  father  and  mother  give  it  sips  of  wine  from  their 
glasses  at  dessert,  and  bid  it  ''be  a  little  man,"  till  the 
child  by  its  own  imitative  faculty  and  by  the  compulsion 
of  others  is  turned  into  evil  ways.  Then,  of  course,  im- 
pure tastes  are  made,  and  perhaps  old  kamic  cravings 
are  awakened  which  might  liave  been  starved  out,  and 
the  body  will  gradually  form  the  habit  of  demanding 
the  things  upon  which  it  has  been  fed.  Despite  all  this 
in  the  past,  make  the  change,  and  as  you  get  rid  of  the 
particles  that  crave  these  impurities  you  will  feel  your 
body  altering  its  habits  and  revolting  against  the  very 
smell  of  the  things  that  it  used  to  enjoy.  The  real  dif- 
ficulty in  the  way  of  the  reformation  lies  in  Kama,  not 
in  the  body.  You  do  not  want  to  do  it ;  if  you  did  you 
would  do  it.  You  say  to  yourself:  "After  all,  perhaps 
it  does  not  matter  so  much ;  I  have  no  psychic  faculties, 
I  am  not  advanced  enough  for  this  to  make  any  differ- 
ence." You  will  never  become  advanced  if  you  do  not 
endeavour  to  live  up  to  the  highest  that  is  within  your 
reach — if  you  allow  the  desire-nature  to  interfere  with 
your  progress.  You  say,  ''How  much  I  should  like  to 
possess  astral  vision,  to  travel  in  the  astral  body ! ' '  but 
when  it  comes  to  the  point  you  prefer  a  "good"  dinner. 
If  the  prize  for  giving  up  unclean  food  were  a  million 
pounds  at  the  end  of  a  year,  how  rapidly  would  difficul- 
ties disappear  and  ways  be  found  for  keeping  the  body 
alive  without  meat  and  wine !    But  when  only  the  price- 


26 


less  treasures  of  the  higher  life  are  offered,  the  difficul- 
ties are  insuperable.  If  men  really  desired  what  they 
pretend  to  desire,  we  should  have  much  more  rapid 
changes  around  us  than  we  now  see.  But  they  make 
believe,  and  make  believe  so  effectually  that  they  deceive 
themselves  into  the  idea  that  they  are  in  earnest,  and 
they  come  back  life  after  life  to  live  in  the  same  un- 
progressive  manner  for  thousands  of  years;  and  then 
in  some  particular  life  they  wonder  why  they  do  not 
advance,  and  why  somebody  else  has  made  such  rapid 
progress  in  this  one  life  while  they  make  none.  The 
man  who  is  in  earnest — not  spasmodically  but  with 
steady  persistence — can  make  what  progress  he  chooses; 
while  the  man  who  is  making  believe  will  run  round  and 
round  the  mill-path  for  many  a  life  to  come. 

Here,  at  any  rate,  in  this  purification  of  the  body 
lies  the  preparation  for  all  Yoga  practice — not  the 
whole  preparation  most  certainly,  but  an  essential  part 
of  it.  This  much  must  suffice  as  to  the  dense  body,  the 
lowest  vehicle  of  consciousness. 

The  Ether ic  Doiihle. — Modern  physical  science  holds 
that  all  bodily  changes,  whether  in  the  muscles,  cells, 
or  nerves,  are  accompanied  by  electric  action,  and  the 
same  is  probably  true  even  of  the  chemical  changes 
which  are  continually  going  on.  Ample  evidence  of  this 
has  been  accumulated  by  careful  observations  with  the 
most  delicate  galvanometers.  Whenever  electric  action 
occurs  ether  must  be  present,  so  that  the  presence  of  the 
current  is  proof  of  the  presence  of  the  ether,  which  in- 
terpenetrates all,  surrounds  all;  no  particle  of  physical 


27 


matter  is  in  contact  with  any  other  particle,  but  each 
swings  in  a  field  of  ether.  The  western  scientist  asserts 
as  a  necessary  hypothesis  that  which  the  trained  pupil 
in  eastern  science  asserts  as  a  verifiable  observation,  for 
as  a  matter  of  fact  ether  is  as  visible  as  a  chair  or  a 
table,  only  a  sight  different  from  the  normal  physical 
is  needed  to  see  it.  As  has  already  been  said,  it  exists 
in  four  modifications,  the  finest  of  these  consisting  of 
the  ultimate  physical  atoms — not  the  so-called  chemical 
atom,  which  is  really  a  complex  body — ultimate,  because 
they  yield  astral  matter  on  disintegration.* 

The  etheric  double  is  composed  of  these  four  ethers, 
which  interpenetrate  the  solid,  liquid,  and  gaseous  con- 
stituents of  the  dense  body,  surrounding  every  particle 
with  an  etheric  envelope,  and  thus  presenting  a  perfect 
duplicate  of  the  denser  form.  This  etheric  double  is  per- 
fectly visible  to  the  trained  sight,  and  is  violet-grey  in 
color,  course  or  fine  in  its  texture  as  the  dense  body  is 
coarse  or  fine.  The  four  ethers  enter  into  it,  as  solids, 
liquids,  and  gases  enter  into  the  composition  of  the 
dense  body,  but  they  can  be  in  coarser  or  finer  combi- 
nations just  as  can  the  denser  constituents;  it  is  im- 
portant to  notice  that  the  dense  body  and  its  etheric 
double  vary  together  as  to  their  quality,  so  that  as  the 
aspirant  deliberately  and  consciously  refines  his  dense 
body,  the  etheric  double  follows  suit  without  his  con- 
sciousness and  without  any  additional  effort,  t 

*  See  an  article  on  ''Occult  Chemistry,"  in  Lucifer,  Novem- 
ber, 1895. 

t  On  looking  at  a  man's  lower  bodies  with  astral  vision,  the 


28 


It  is  by  means  of  the  etheric  double  that  the  life-force, 
Prana,  runs  along  the  nerves  of  the  body  and  thus 
enables  them  to  act  as  the  carriers  of  motor  force  and 
of  sensitiveness  to  external  impacts.  The  powers  of 
thought,  of  movement,  and  of  feeling  are  not  resident 
in  physical  or  etheric  nerve-substance ;  they  are  activi- 
ties of  the  Ego  working  in  his  inner  bodies,  and  the  ex- 
pression of  them  on  the  physical  plane  is  rendered  pos- 
sible by  the  life-breath  as  it  runs  along  the  nerve-threads 


etheric  double  (Linga  Sharira)  and  the  astral  body  (kamic  body) 
are  seen  interpenetrating  each  other,  as  both  interpenetrate  the 
dense  physical,  and  hence  some  confusion  has  arisen  in  the  past, 
and  the  names  Linga  Shirira  and  the  astral  body  have  been  used 
interchangeably,  while  the  latter  name  has  also  been  used  for  the 
kamic  or  desire-body.  This  loose  terminology  has  caused  much 
trouble,  as  the  functions  of  the  kamic  body,  termed  the  astral  body, 
have  often  been  understood  as  the  functions  of  the  etheric  double, 
also  termed  the  astral  body,  and  the  student,  unable  to  see  for 
himself,  has  been  hopelessly  entangled  in  apparent  contradictions. 
Careful  observations  on  the  formation  of  these  two  bodies  now 
enable  us  to  say  definitely  that  the  etheric  double  is  composed  of 
the  physical  ethers  only,  and  cannot,  if  extruded,  leave  the 
physical  plane  or  go  far  away  from  its  denser  counterpart; 
further,  that  it  is  built  after  the  mould  given  by  the  Lords  of 
Karma,  and  is  not  brought  with  him  by  the  Ego,  but  awaits 
him  with  the  physical  body  formed  upon  it.  The  astral  or  kamic 
body,  the  desire-body,  on  the  other  hand,  is  composed  of  astral 
matter  only,  is  able  to  range  the  astral  plane  when  freed  from 
the  physical  body,  and  is  the  proper  vehicle  of  the  Ego  on  that 
plane;  it  is  brought  with  him  by  the  Ego  when  he  comes  to 
re-incarnate.  Under  these  circumstances  it  is  better  to  call  the 
first  the  etheric  double,  and  the  second  the  astral  body,  and  so 
avoid  confusion. 


29 


and  round  the  nerve-cells ;  for  Prana,  the  life-breath,  is 
the  active  energy  of  the  Self,  as  Shri  Shankaracharya 
has  taught  us.  The  function  of  the  etheric  double  is  to 
serve  as  the  physical  medium  for  this  energy,  and  hence 
it  is  often  spoken  of  in  our  literature  as  the  ''vehicle 
of  Prana." 

It  may  be  useful  to  note  that  the  etheric  double  is 
peculiarly  susceptible  to  the  volatile  constituents  of  al- 
cohols. 

Phenomena  connected  with  the  Physical  Body. — 
When  a  person  ' '  goes  to  sleep ' '  the  Ego  slips  out  of  the 
physical  body,  and  leaves  it  to  slumber  and  so  to  recu- 
perate itself  for  the  next  day's  work.  The  dense  body 
and  its  etheric  double  are  thus  left  to  their  own  devices, 
and  to  the  play  of  the  influences  which  they  attract  to 
themselves  by  their  constitution  and  habits.  Streams 
of  thought-forms  from  the  astral  world  of  a  nature  con- 
gruous with  the  thought-forms  created  or  harbored  by 
the  Ego  in  his  daily  life  pass  into  and  out  of  the  dense 
and  etheric  brains,  and,  mingling  with  the  automatic 
repetitions  of  vibrations  set  up  in  waking  consciousness 
by  the  Ego,  cause  the  broken  and  chaotic  dreams  with 
which  most  people  are  familiar.*  These  broken  images 
are  instructive  as  showing  the  working  of  the  physical 
body  when  it  is  left  to  itself ;  it  can  only  reproduce  frag- 
ments of  past  vibrations  without  rational  order  or  co- 
herence, fitting  them  together  as  they  are  thrown  up, 

*See  the  articles  on  "Dreams"  in  Lucifer,  November  and 
December,  1895;   republished  in  book  form,   1898, 


30 


however  grotesquely  incongruous  they  may  be ;  it  is  in- 
sensible to  absurdity  or  irrationality,  content  with  a 
phantasmagoria  of  kaleidoscopic  shapes  and  colors, 
without  even  the  regularity  given  by  the  kaleidoscope- 
mirrors.  Looked  at  in  this  way,  the  dense  and  etheric 
brains  are  readily  recognized  as  instruments  of  thought, 
not  as  creators  thereof,  for  we  see  how  very  erratic  are 
their  creations  when  they  are  left  to  themselves. 

In  sleep  the  thinking  Ego  slips  out  of  these  two 
bodies,  or  rather  this  one  body  with  its  visible  and  in- 
visible parts,  leaving  them  together;  in  death  it  slips 
out  for  the  last  time,  but  with  this  difference,  that  it 
draws  out  the  etheric  double  with  it,  separating  it  from 
its  dense  counterpart  and  thus  rendering  impossible 
any  further  play  of  the  life-breath  in  the  latter  as  an 
organic  whole.  The  Ego  quickly  shakes  off  the  etheric 
double,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  cannot  pass  on  to  the 
astral  plane,  and  leaves  it  to  disintegrate  with  its  life- 
long partner.  It  will  sometimes  appear  immediately 
after  death  to  friends  at  no  great  distance  from  the 
corpse,  but  naturally  shows  very  little  consciousness, 
and  will  not  speak  or  do  anything  beyond  ''manifest- 
ing" itself.  It  is  comparatively  easily  seen,  being  physi- 
cal, and  a  slight  tension  of  the  nervous  system  will  ren- 
der vision  sufficiently  acute  to  discern  it.  It  is  also  re- 
sponsible for  many  "churchyard  ghosts,"  as  it  hovers 
over  the  grave  in  which  its  physical  counterpart  is  lying, 
and  is  more  readily  visible  than  astral  bodies  for  the 
reason  just  given.  Thus  even  ''in  death  they  are  not 
divided"  by  more  than  a  few  feet  of  space. 


31 


For  the  normal  man  it  is  only  at  death  that  this 
separation  takes  place,  but  some  abnormal  people  of  the 
type  called  mediumistic  are  subject  to  a  partial  division 
of  the  physical  body  during  earth-life,  a  dangerous  and 
fortunately  a  comparatively  rare  abnormality  which 
gives  rise  to  much  nervous  strain  and  disturbance.  When 
the  ether ic  double  is  extruded  the  double  itself  is  rent 
in  twain;  the  whole  of  it  could  not  be  separated  from 
the  dense  body  without  causing  the  death  of  the  latter, 
since  the  currents  of  the  life-breath  need  its  presence 
for  their  circulation.  Even  its  partial  withdrawal  re- 
duces the  dense  body  to  a  state  of  lethargy,  and  the  vital 
activities  are  almost  suspended ;  extreme  exhaustion  fol- 
lows the  re-uniting  of  the  severed  parts,  and  the  con- 
dition of  the  medium  until  the  normal  union  is  re- 
established is  one  of  considerable  physical  danger.  The 
greater  number  of  the  phenomena  that  occur  in  the 
presence  of  mediums  are  not  connected  with  this  ex- 
trusion of  the  etheric  double,  but  some  who  have  been 
distinguished  for  the  remarkable  character  of  the  ma- 
terializations which  they  have  assisted  in  producing  of- 
fer this  peculiarity  to  observation.  I  am  informed  that 
Mr.  Eglington  exhibited  this  curious  physical  dissocia- 
tion to  a  rare  extent,  and  that  his  etheric  double  might 
be  seen  oozing  from  his  left  side,  while  his  dense  body 
shrivelled  perceptibly;  and  that  the  same  phenomenon 
has  been  observed  with  Mr.  Husk,  whose  dense  body 
became  too  reduced  to  fill  out  his  clothes.  Mr.  Eglin- 
ton's  body  once  was  so  diminished  in  size  that  a  ma- 
terialized form  carried  it  out  and  presented  it  for  the 


32 


inspection  of  the  sitters — one  of  the  few  cases  in  which 
both  medium  and  materialized  form  have  been  visible 
together  in  light  sufficient  to  allow  of  examination.  This 
shrinkage  of  the  medium  seems  to  imply  the  removal 
of  the  denser  "ponderable"  matter  from  the  body — 
very  possibly  part  of  the  liquid  constituents — but,  so 
far  as  I  am  aware,  no  observations  have  been  made  on 
this  point,  and  it  is  therefore  impossible  to  speak  with 
any  certainty.  What  is  certain  is  that  this  partial  ex- 
trusion of  the  etheric  double  results  in  much  nervous 
trouble,  and  that  it  should  not  be  practiced  by  any  sen- 
sible person  if  he  finds  that  he  is  unfortunate  enough 
to  be  liable  to  it. 

We  have  now  studied  the  physical  body  both  in  its 
dense  and  etheric  parts,  the  vesture  which  the  Ego 
must  wear  for  his  work  on  tlie  physical  plane,  the  dwell- 
ing which  may  be  either  his  convenient  office  for  physi- 
cal work,  or  his  prison-house  of  which  death  alone  holds 
the  key.  We  can  see  what  we  ought  to  have  and  what 
we  can  gradually  make — a  body  perfectly  healthy  and 
strong,  and  at  the  same  time  delicately  organized,  re- 
fined, and  sensitive.  Healthy  it  should  be — and  in  the 
East  health  is  insisted  on  as  a  condition  of  discipleship 
— for  everything  that  is  unhealthy  in  the  body  mars  it 
as  an  instrument  of  the  Ego,  and  is  apt  to  distort  both 
the  impressions  sent  inwards  and  the  impulses  sent  out- 
wards. The  activities  of  the  Ego  are  hindered  if  his 
instrument  be  strained  or  twisted  by  ill-health.  Healthy, 
then,  delicately  organized,  refined,  sensitive,  repelling 
automatically  all  evil  influences,  automatically  receptive 


33 


of  all  good — such  a  body  we  should  deliberately  build, 
choosing  among  all  the  things  that  surround  us  those 
that  conduce  to  that  end,  knowing  that  the  task  can  be 
accomplished  only  gradually,  but  working  on  patiently 
and  steadily  with  that  object  in  view.  We  shall  know 
when  we  are  beginning  to  succeed  even  to  a  very  limited 
extent,  for  we  shall  find  opening  up  in  us  all  kinds  of 
powers  of  perception  that  we  did  not  before  possess. 
We  shall  find  ourselves  becoming  more  sensitive  to 
sounds  and  sights,  to  fuller,  softer,  richer  harmonies, 
to  tenderer,  fairer,  lovlier  hues.  Just  as  the  painter 
trains  his  eye  to  see  the  delicacies  of  color  to  which 
common  eyes  are  blind ;  just  as  the  musician  trains  his 
ear  to  hear  overtones  of  notes  to  which  common  ears  are 
deaf;  so  may  we  train  our  bodies  to  be  receptive  to  the 
finer  vibrations  of  life  missed  by  ordinary  men.  True, 
many  unpleasant  sensations  will  come,  for  the  world  we 
are  living  in  is  rendered  rough  and  coarse  by  the  hu- 
manity that  dwells  in  it ;  but  on  the  other  hand,  beauties 
will  reveal  themselves  that  will  repay  us  a  hundredfold 
for  the  difficulties  we  face  and  overcome.  And  this,  not 
that  we  may  possess  such  bodies  for  selfish  purposes 
either  of  vanity  or  of  enjoyment,  but  in  order  that  we, 
the  men  who  own  them,  may  own  them  for  wider  use- 
fulness, for  added  strength  to  serve.  They  will  be  more 
efficient  instruments  with  which  to  help  the  progress 
of  humanity,  and  so  more  fit  to  aid  in  that  task  of  for- 
warding human  evolution  which  is  the  work  of  our 
great  IMasters,  and  in  which  it  may  be  our  privilege  to 
co-operate. 


34 

Although  we  have  been  only  on  the  physical  plane 
throughout  this  part  of  our  subject,  we  may  yet  see 
that  the  study  is  not  without  importance,  and  that  the 
lowest  of  the  vehicles  of  consciousness  needs  our  at- 
tention and  will  repay  our  care.  These  cities  of  ours, 
this  land  of  ours,  will  be  cleaner,  fairer,  better,  when 
this  knowledge  has  become  common  knowledge,  and 
when  it  is  accepted  not  only  as  intellectually  probable, 
but  as  a  law  of  daily  life. 


35 

The  Astral  Body. 

We  have  studied  the  physical  body  of  man  both  as  to 
its  visible  and  invisible  parts,  and  we  understand  that 
man — the  living,  conscious  entity — in  his  ''waking" 
consciousness,  living  in  the  physical  world,  can  only 
show  so  much  of  his  knowledge  and  manifest  so  much 
of  his  powers  as  he  is  able  to  express  through  his  physi- 
cal body.  According  to  the  perfection  or  imperfection 
of  its  development  will  be  the  perfection  or  imperfection 
of  his  expression  on  the  physical  plane ;  it  limits  him 
while  he  functions  in  the  lower  world,  forming  a  verit- 
able "ring  pass-not"  around  him.  That  which  cannot 
.pass  through  it  cannot  manifest  on  earth,  and  hence  its 
importance  to  the  developing  man.  In  the  same  way 
when  the  man  is  functioning  without  the  physical  body 
in  another  region  of  the  universe,  the  astral  plane  or 
astral  world,  he  is  able  to  express  on  that  plane  just  so 
much  of  his  knowledge  and  his  powers,  of  himself  in 
short,  as  his  astral  body  enables  him  to  put  forth.  It 
is  at  once  his  vehicle  and  his  limitation.  The  man  is 
more  than  his  bodies;  he  has  in  him  much  that  he  is 
unable  to  manifest  either  on  the  physical  or  on  the  astral 
plane ;  but  so  much  as  he  is  able  to  express  may  be  taken 
as  the  man  himself  in  that  particular  region  of  the  uni- 
verse. What  he  can  show  of  himself  down  here  is  limited 
by  the  physical  body ;  what  he  can  show  of  himself  in  the 
astral  world  is  limited  by  the  astral  body;  so  we  shall 
find  as  we  rise  to  higher  worlds  in  our  study,  that  more 
and  more  of  the  man  is  able  to  express  itself  as  he  him- 


36 


self  develops  in  his  evolution,  and  also  graduaU^  brings 
towards  perfection  higher  and  higher  vehicles  of  con- 
sciousness. 

It  may  be  well  to  remind  the  reader,  as  we  are  en- 
tering on  fields  comparatively  untrodden  and  to  the 
majority  unknown,  that  no  claim  is  here  put  forward 
to  infallible  knowledge  or  to  perfect  power  of  observa- 
tion. Errors  of  observation  and  of  inference  may  be 
made  on  planes  above  the  physical  as  well  as  on  the 
physical,  and  this  possibility  should  always  be  kept  in 
mind.  As  knowledge  increases  and  training  is  prolong- 
ed, more  and  more  accuracy  will  be  reached,  and  such 
errors  will  thus  gradually  be  eliminated.  But  as  the 
writer  is  only  a  student,  mistakes  are  likely  to  be  made 
and  to  need  correction  in  the  future.  They  may  creep 
in  on  matters  of  detail,  but  will  not  touch  the  general 
principles  nor  vitiate  the  main  conclusions. 

First,  let  the  meaning  of  the  words  astral  plane  or 
astral  world  be  clearly  grasped.  The  astral  world  is  a 
definite  region  of  the  universe,  surrounding  and  inter- 
penetrating the  physical,  but  imperceptible  to  our  or- 
dinary observation  because  it  is  composed  of  a  different 
order  of  matter.  If  the  ultimate  physical  atom  be  taken 
and  broken  up,  it  vanishes  so  far  as  the  physical  world 
is  concerned ;  but  it  is  found  to  be  composed  of  numerous 
particles  of  the  grossest  kind  of  astral  matter — the  solid 
matter  of  the  astral  world.*  We  have  found  seven  sub- 
states   of   physical   matter — solid,    liquid,   gaseous,    and 

*  The  word  ' '  astral, ' '  starry,  is  not  a  very  happy  one,  but  it 
has  been  used  during  so  many  centuries  to  denote  super-physical 


37 


four  etlieric — under  which  are  classified  the  innumerable 
combinations  which  make  up  the  physical  world.  In  the 
same  way  we  have  seven  sub-states  of  astral  matter,  cor- 
responding to  the  physical,  and  under  these  may  be 
classified  the  innumerable  combinations  which  similarly 
make  up  the  astral  world.  All  physical  atoms  have 
their  astral  envelopes,  the  astral  matter  thus  forming 
what  may  be  called  the  matrix  of  the  physical,  the  phy- 
sical being  embedded  in  the  astral.  The  astral  matter 
serves  as  a  vehicle  for  Jiva,  the  One  Life  animating  all, 
and  by  means  of  the  astral  matter  currents  of  Jiva  sur- 
round, sustain,  nourish  every  particle  of  physical  mat- 
ter, these  currents  of  Jiva  giving  rise  not  only  to  what 
are  popularly  called  vital  forces,  but  also  to  all  electrical, 
magnetic,  chemical,  and  other  energies,  attraction,  co- 
hesion, repulsion,  and  the  like,  all  of  which  are  differen- 
tiations of  the  One  Life  in  which  universes  swim  as  fishes 
in  the  sea.  From  the  astral  world  thus  intimately  in- 
terpenetrating the  physical,  Jiva  passes  to  the  ether  of 
the  latter,  which  then  becomes  the  vehicle  of  all  these 
forces  to  the  lower  sub-states  of  physical  matter,  wherein 
we  observe  their  play.  If  we  imagine  the  physical 
world  to  be  struck  out  of  existence  without  any  other 
change  being  made,  we  should  still  have  a  perfect  replica 
of  it  in  astral  matter,  and  if  we  further  imagine  every 

matter  that  it  would  now  be  difficult  to  dislodge  it.  It  was 
probably  at  first  chosen  by  observers  in  consequence  of  the 
luminous  appearance  of  astral  as  compared  with  physical  matter. 
The  student  is  advised  to  read,  on  this  whole  subject,  Manual 
No.  v.,  The  Astral  Plane,  by  C.  W.  Leadbeater. 


38 


one  to  be  dowered  with  working  astral  faculties,  men 
and  women  would  at  first  be  unconscious  of  any  differ- 
ence in  their  surroundings;  ''dead"  people  who  wake 
up  in  the  lower  regions  of  the  astral  world  often  find 
themselves  in  such  a  state  and  believe  themselves  to  be 
yet  living  in  the  physical  world.  As  most  of  us  have  not 
yet  developed  astral  vision,  it  is  necessary  to  enforce 
this  relative  reality  of  the  astral  world  as  a  part  of  the 
phenomenal  universe,  and  to  see  it  with  the  mental  eye, 
if  not  with  the  astral.  It  is  as  real  as — •  in  fact,  not 
being  quite  so  far  removed  from  the  One  Reality,  it  is 
more  real  than — the  physical;  its  phenomena  are  open 
to  competent  observation  like  those  of  the  physical  plane. 
Just  as  down  here  a  blind  man  cannot  see  physical  ob- 
jects, and  as' many  things  can  only  be  observed  with  the 
help  of  apparatus — the  microscope,  spectroscope,  etc. — 
so  is  it  with  the  astral  plane.  Astrally  blind  people  can- 
not see  astral  objects  at  all,  and  many  things  escape  or- 
dinary astral  vision,  or  clairvoyance.  But  at  the  present 
stage  of  evolution  many  people  could  develop  the  astral 
senses  and  are  developing  them  to  some  extent,  thus 
enabling  themselves  to  receive  the  subtler  vibrations  of 
the  astral  plane.  Such  persons  are  indeed  liable  to 
make  many  mistakes,  as  a  child  makes  mistakes  when  he 
begins  to  use  his  physical  senses,  but  these  mistakes 
are  corrected  by  wider  experience,  and  after  a  time  they 
can  see  and  hear  as  accurately  on  the  astral  as  on  the 
physical  plane.  It  is  not  desirable  to  force  this  develop- 
ment by  artificial  means,  for  until  some  amount  of 
spiritual  strength  has  been  evolved  the  physical  world 


39 


is  about  as  much  as  can  conveniently  be  managed,  and 
the  intrusion  of  astral  sights,  sounds,  and  general  phe- 
nomena is  apt  to  be  disturbing  and  even  alarming.  But 
the  time  comes  when  this  stage  is  reached  and  when  the 
relative  reality  of  the  astral  part  of  the  invisible  world 
is  borne  in  upon  the  waking  consciousness. 

For  this  it  is  necessary  not  only  to  have  an  astral 
body,  as  we  all  of  us  have,  but  to  have  it  fully  organized 
and  in  working  order,  the  consciousness  being  accustom- 
ed to  act  in  it,  not  only  to  act  through  it  on  the  physical 
body.  Every"  one  is  constantly  working  through  the 
astral  body,  but  comparatively  few  work  in  it  separated 
from  the  physical.  Without  the  general  action  through 
the  astral  body  there  would  be  no  connection  between 
the  external  world  and  the  mind  of  man,  no  connection 
between  impacts  made  on  the  physical  senses  and  the 
perception  of  them  b}^  the  mind.  The  impact  becomes 
a  sensation  in  the  astral  body,  and  is  then  perceived  by 
the  mind.  The  astral  body,  in  which  are  the  centers  of 
sensation,  is  often  spoken  of  as  the  astral  man,  just  as 
we  might  call  the  physical  body  the  physical  man;  but 
it  is  of  course  only  a  vehicle — a  sheath,  as  the  Vedantin 
would  call  it — in  which  the  man  himself  is  function- 
ing, and  through  which  he  reaches,  and  is  reached  by, 
the  grosser  vehicle,  the  physical  body. 

As  to  the  constitution  of  the  astral  body,  it  is  made 
up  of  the  seven  sub-states  of  astral  matter,  and  may  have 
coarser  or  finer  materials  drawn  from  each  of  these. 
It  is  easy  to  picture  a  man  in  a  well-formed  astral  body ; 
you  can  think  of  him  as  dropping  the  physical  body  and 


40 


standing  up  in  a  subtler,  more  luminous  copy  of  it, 
visible  in  his  own  likeness  to  clairvoyant  vision,  though 
invisible  to  ordinary  sight.  I  have  said  ''a  well-formed 
astral  body,"  for  an  undeveloped  person  in  his  astral 
body  presents  a  very  inchoate  appearance.  Its  outline 
is  undefined,  its  materials  are  dull  and  ill-arranged,  and 
if  withdrawn  from  the  body  it  is  a  mere  shapeless  shift- 
ing cloud  obviously  unfit  to  act  as  an  independent  vehi- 
cle ;  it  is  in  truth  rather  a  fragment  of  astral  matter 
than  an  organized  astral  body — a  mass  of  astral  pro- 
toplasm of  an  amoeboid  type.  A  well-formed  astral  body 
means  that  a  man  has  reached  a  fairly  high  level  of  in- 
tellectual culture  or  of  spiritual  growth,  so  that  the  ap- 
pearance of  the  astral  body  is  significant  of  the  progress 
made  by  its  owner ;  by  the  definiteness  of  its  outline,  the 
luminosity  of  its  materials,  and  the  perfection  of  its 
organization,  one  may  judge  of  the  stage  of  evolution 
reached  by  the  Ego  using  it. 

As  regards  the  question  of  its  improvement — a  ques- 
tion important  to  us  all — it  must  be  remembered  that 
the  improvement  of  the  astral  body  hinges  on  the  one 
side  on  the  purification  of  the  physical  body,  and  on 
the  other  on  the  purification  and  development  of  the 
mind.  The  astral  body  is  peculiarly  susceptible  to  im- 
pression from  thought,  for  astral  matter  responds  more 
rapidly  than  phj^sical  to  every  impulse  from  the  world 
of  mind.  For  instance,  if  we  look  at  the  astral  world  we 
find  it  full  of  continually  changing  shapes;  we  find 
there  "thought-forms" — forms  composed  of  elemental 
essence  and  animated  by  a  thought — and  we  also  notice 


41 


vast  masses  of  this  elemental  essence,  from  which  con- 
tinually shapes  emerge  and  into  which  they  again  dis- 
appear ;  watching  carefully,  we  may  see  that  currents  of 
thought  thrill  this  astral  matter,  that  strong  thoughts 
take  a  covering  of  it  and  persist  as  entities  for  a  long 
time,  while  weak  thoughts  clothe  themselves  feebly  and 
waver  out  again,  so  that  all  through  the  astral  world 
changes  are  ever  going  on  under  thought-impulses.  The 
astral  body  of  man,  being  made  of  astral  matter,  shares 
this  readiness  to  respond  to  the  impact  of  thought,  and 
thrills  in  answer  to  every  thought  that  strikes  it,  whether 
the  thoughts  come  from  without,  from  the  minds  of  other 
men,  or  come  from  within,  from  the  mind  of  its  owner. 
Let  us  study  this  astral  body  under  these  impacts 
from  without  and  within.  We  see  it  permeating  the 
physical  body  and  extending  around  it  in  every  direc- 
tion like  a  colored  cloud.  The  colors  vary  with  the 
nature  of  the  man,  with  his  lower,  animal,  passional 
nature,  and  the  part  outside  the  physical  body  is  called 
the  kamic  aura,  as  belonging  to  the  kama  or  desire- 
body,  commonly  called  the  astral  body  of  man.*     For 

*  This  separation  of  the  ''aura"  from  the  man,  as  though  it 
were  something  different  from  himself,  is  misleading,  although 
very  natural  from  the  point  of  view  of  observation.  The  "aura" 
is  the  cloud  round  the  body,  in  ordinary  parlance;  really,  the 
man  lives  on  the  various  planes  in  such  garments  as  befit  each, 
and  all  these  garments  or  bodies  interpenetrate  each  other;  the 
lowest  and  smallest  of  these  is  called  ''the  body,"  and  the  mixed 
substances  of  the  other  garments  are  called  the  aura  when  they 
extend  beyond  that  body.  The  kamic  aura,  then,  is  merely  such 
part  of  the  kamic  body  as  extends  beyond  the  physical. 


42 


the  astral  body  is  the  vehicle  of  man's  kamic  conscious- 
ness, the  seat  of  all  animal  passions  and  desires,  the 
center  of  the  senses,  as  already  said,  where  all  sensations 
arise.  It  changes  its  colors  continually  as  it  vibrates 
under  thought-impacts ;  if  a  man  loses  his  temper,  flashes 
of  scarlet  appear ;  if  he  feels  love,  rose-red  thrills  through 
it.  If  the  man's  thoughts  are  high  and  noble  they  de- 
mand finer  astral  matter  to  answer  to  them,  and  we  trace 
this  action  on  the  astral  body  in  its  loss  of  the  grosser 
and  denser  particles  from  each  sub-plane,  and  its  gain 
of  the  finer  and  rarer  kinds.  The  astral  body  of  a  man 
whose  thoughts  are  low  and  animal  is  gross,  thick,  dense, 
and  dark  in  color — often  so  dense  that  the  outline  of 
the  physical  body  is  almost  lost  in  it;  whereas  that  of 
an  advanced  man  is  fine,  clear,  luminous  and  bright  in 
color,  a  really  beautiful  object.  In  such  a  case  the 
lower  passions  have  been  dominated,  and  the  selective 
action  of  the  mind  has  refined  the  astral  matter.  By 
thinking  nobly,  then,  we  purify  the  astral  body,  even 
without  having  consciously  worked  towards  that  end. 
And  be  it  remembered  that  this  inner  working  exercises 
a  potent  influence  on  the  thoughts  that  are  attracted 
from  without  to  the  astral  body ;  a  body  which  is  made 
by  its  owner  to  respond  habitually  to  evil  thoughts  acts 
as  a  magnet  to  similar  thought-forms  in  its  vicinity, 
whereas  a  pure  astral  body  acts  on  such  thoughts  with 
a  repulsive  energy,  and  attracts  to  itself  thought-forms 
composed  of  matter  congruous  with  its  own.  , 

As  said  above,  the  astral  body  hinges  on  one  side  to 
the  physical,  and  it  is  affected  by  the  purity  or  impurity 


43 


of  the  physical  body.  We  have  seen  that  the  solids, 
liquids,  gases,  and  ethers  of  which  the  physical  body  is 
composed  may  be  coarse  or  refined,  gross  or  delicate. 
Their  nature  will  in  turn  affect  the  nature  of  their  cor- 
responding astral  envelopes.  If,  unwisely  careless  about 
the  physical,  we  build  into  our  dense  bodies  solid  parti- 
cles of  an  impure  kind,  we  attract  to  ourselves  the  cor- 
respondingly impure  kind  of  what  we  call  the  solid 
astral.  As  we,  on  the  other  hand,  build  into  our  dense 
bodies  solid  particles  of  purer  type,  we  attract  the  cor- 
respondingly purer  type  of  solid  astral  matter.  As  we 
carry  on  the  purification  of  the  physical  body  by  feed- 
ing it  on  clean  food  and  drink,  by  excluding  from  our 
diet  the  polluting  kinds  of  aliment — the  blood  of  ani- 
mals, alcohol,  and  other  things  that  are  foul  and  de- 
grading— we  not  only  improve  our  physical  vehicle  of 
consciousness,  but  we  also  begin  to  purify  the  astral 
vehicle  and  take  from  the  astral  world  more  delicate 
and  finer  materials  for  its  construction.  The  effect  of 
this  is  not  only  important  as  regards  the  present  earth- 
life,  but  it  has  a  distinct  bearing  also — as  we  shall  see 
later — on  the  next  post-mortem  state,  on  the  stay  in 
the  astral  world,  and  also  on  the  kind  of  body  we  shall 
have  in  the  next  life  upon  earth. 

Nor  is  this  all:  the  worse  kinds  of  food  attract  to 
the  astral  body  entities  of  a  mischievous  kind  belonging 
to  the  astral  world,  for  we  have  to  do  not  only  with 
astral  matter,  but  also  with  what  are  called  the  elemen- 
tals  of  that  region.  These  are  entities  of  higher  and 
lower  types  existing  on  that  plane,  given  birth  to  by  the 


44 

thoughts  of  men,  and  there  are  also  in  the  astral  world 
depraved  men  imprisoned  in  their  astral  bodies,  known 
as  elementaries.  The  elementals  are  attracted  towards 
people  whose  astral  bodies  contain  matter  congenial  to 
their  nature,  while  the  elementaries  naturally  seek  those 
who  indulge  in  vices  such  as  they  themselves  en- 
couraged while  in  physical  bodies.  Any  person  en- 
dowed with  astral  vision  sees,  as  he  walks  along  London 
streets,  hordes  of  loathsome  elementals  crowding  round 
our  butchers'  shops,  and  in  beer-houses  and  gin-palaces 
elementaries  specially  gather,  feasting  on  the  foul  ema- 
nations of  the  liquors,  and  thrusting  themselves,  when 
possible,  into  the  very  bodies  of  the  drinkers.  These 
beings  are  attracted  by  those  who  build  their  bodies  out 
of  these  materials,  and  such  people  have  these  surround- 
ings as  part  of  their  astral  life.  So  it  goes  on  through 
each  stage  of  the  astral  plane ;  as  we  purify  the  physi- 
cal we  draw  to  ourselves  correspondingly  pure  stages 
of  the  astral  matter. 

Now  of  course  the  possibilities  of  the  astral  body 
largely  depend  on  the  nature  of  the  materials  we  build 
into  it ;  as  by  the  process  of  purification  we  make  these 
bodies  finer  and  finer,  they  cease  to  vibrate  in  answer  to 
the  lower  impulses,  and  begin  to  answer  to  the  higher 
influences  of  the  astral  world.  We  are  thus  making  an 
instrument  which,  though  by  its  very  nature  sensitive 
to  influences  coming  to  it  from  without,  is  gradually 
losing  the  power  of  responding  to  the  lower  vibrations, 

and  is  taking  on  the  power  of  answering  to  the  higher 

an   instrument  which  is  tuned  to  vibrate   only  to  the 


45 


higher  notes.  As  we  can  take  a  wire  to  produce  a  sym- 
pathetic vibration,  choosing  to  that  end  its  diameter,  its 
length,  and  its  tension,  so  we  can  attune  our  astral  bodies 
to  give  out  sympathetic  vibrations  when  noble  harmonies 
are  sounded  in  the  world  around  us.  This  is  not  a  mere 
matter  of  speculation  or  of  theory;  it  is  a  matter  of 
scientific  fact.  As  here  we  tune  the  wire  or  the  string, 
so  there  we  can  tune  the  strings  of  the  astral  body; 
the  law  of  cause  and  effect  holds  good  there  as  well  as 
here;  we  appeal  to  the  law,  we  take  refuge  in  the  law, 
and  on  that  we  rely.  All  we  need  is  knowledge,  and 
the  will  to  put  the  knowledge  into  practice.  This  know- 
ledge you  may  take  and  experiment  on  first,  if  you  will, 
as  a  mere  hypothesis,  congruous  with  facts  known  to  you 
in  the  lower  world ;  later  on,  as  you  purify  the  astral 
body,  the  hypothesis  will  change  into  knowledge ;  it  will 
be  a  matter  of  your  own  first-hand  observation,  so  that 
you  will  be  able  to  verify  the  theories  you  originally  ac- 
cepted only  as  working  hypothesis. 

Our  possibilities  then  of  mastering  the  astral  world, 
and  of  becoming  of  real  service  there,  depend  first  of 
all  on  this  process  of  purification.  There  are  definite 
methods  of  Yoga  by  which  development  of  the  astral 
senses  may  be  helped  forward  in  a  rational  and  healthy 
way,  but  it  is  not  of  the  least  use  to  try  to  teach  these 
to  any  one  who  has  not  been  using  these  simple  pre- 
paratory means  of  purification.  It  is  a  common  experi- 
ence that  people  are  very  anxious  to  try  some  new  and 
unusual  method  of  progress,  but  it  is  idle  to  instruct 
people  in  Yoga  when  they  will  not  even  practise  these 


46 


preparatory  stages  in  their  ordinary  life.  Suppose  one 
began  to  teach  some  very  simple  form  of  Yoga  to  an 
ordinary  unprepared  person ;  he  would  take  it  up  eager- 
ly and  enthusiastically  because  it  was  new,  because  it 
was  strange,  because  he  hoped  for  very  quick  results, 
and  before  he  had  been  working  at  it  for  even  a  year 
he  would  get  tired  of  the  regular  strain  of  it  in  his  daily 
life  and  disheartened  by  the  absence  of  immediate  effect ; 
unused  to  persistent  effort,  steadily  maintained  day  after 
day,  he  would  break  down  and  give  up  his  practice; 
the  novelty  outworn,  weariness  would  soon  assert  itself. 
If  a  person  cannot  or  will  not  accomplish  the  simple  and 
comparatively  easy  dut}^  of  purifying  the  physical  and 
astral  bodies  by  using  a  temporary  self-denial  to  break 
the  bonds  of  evil  habits  in  eating  and  drinking,  it  is  idle 
for  him  to  hanker  after  more  difficult  processes  which 
attract  by  reason  of  their  novelty  and  would  soon  be 
dropped  as  an  intolerable  burden.  All  talk  even  of 
special  methods  is  idle  until  these  ordinary  humble 
means  have  been  practised  for  some  time ;  but  with  the 
purification  new  possibilities  will  begin  to  show  them- 
selves. The  pupil  will  find  knowledge  gradually  flow 
into  him,  keener  vision  will  awaken,  vibrations  will 
reach  him  from  every  side,  arousing  in  him  response 
which  could  not  have  been  made  by  him  in  the  days  of 
blindness  and  obtuseness.  Sooner  or  later,  according  to 
the  Karma  of  his  past,  this  experience  becomes  his,  and 
just  as  a  child  mastering  the  difficulties  of  the  alphabet 
has  the  pleasure  of  the  book  it  can  read,  so  the  student 
will  find  coming  to  his  knowledge  and  under  his  control 


47 


possibilities  of  which  he  had  not  dreamed  in  his  careless 
days,  new  vistas  of  knowledge  opening  out  before  him, 
a  wider  universe  unfolding  on  every  side. 

If,  now,  for  a  few  moments,  we  study  the  astral  body 
as  regards  its  functions  in  the  sleeping  and  waking 
states,  we  shall  be  able  easily  and  rapidly  to  appreciate 
its  functions  when  it  becomes  a  vehicle  of  consciousness 
apart  from  the  body.  If  we  study  a  person  when  he  is 
awake  and  when  he  is  asleep  we  shall  become  aware  of 
one  very  marked  change  as  regards  the  astral  body; 
when  he  is  awake,  the  astral  activities — the  changing 
colors  and  so  on — all  manifest  themselves  in  and  im- 
mediately around  the  physical  body;  but  when  he  is 
asleep  a  separation  has  occurred,  and  we  see  the  physi- 
cal body — the  dense  body  and  the  etheric  double — lying 
by  themselves  on  the  bed,  while  the  astral  body  is  float- 
ing above  them.*  If  the  person  we  are  studying  is  one 
of  mediocre  development,  the  astral  body  when  separated 
from  the  physical  is  the  somewhat  shapeless  mass  before 
described ;  it  cannot  go  far  away  from  its  physical  body, 
it  is  useless  as  a  vehicle  of  consciousness,  and  the  man 
within  it  is  in  a  very  vague  and  dreamy  condition,  un- 
accustomed to  act  away  from  his  physical  vehicle ;  in 
fact,  he  may  be  said  to  be  almost  asleep,  failing  the  me- 
dium through  which  he  has  been  accustomed  to  work, 
and  he  is  not  able  to  receive  definite  impressions  from 
the  astral  world  or  express  himself  clearly  through  the 
poorly-organized  astral  body.     The  centers  of  sensation 

*  See  for  a  fuller  description  the  articles  on  '* Dreams"  be- 
fore referred  to. 


48 

in  it  may  be  affected  by  passing  thought-forms,  and  he 
may  answer  in  it  to  stimuli  that  rouse  the  lower  nature ; 
but  the  whole  effect  given  to  the  observer  is  one  of  sleepi- 
ness and  vagueness,  the  astral  body  lacking  all  definite 
activity  and  floating  idly,  inchoate,  above  the  sleeping 
physical  form.  If  anything  should  occur  tending  to 
lead  or  drive  it  away  from  its  physical  partner,  the  lat- 
ter will  awaken  and  the  astral  will  quickly  re-enter  it. 
But  if  a  person  be  observed  who  is  much  more  developed, 
say  one  who  is  accustomed  to  function  in  the  astral 
world  and  to  use  the  astral  body  for  that  purpose,  it  will 
be  seen  that  when  the  physical  body  goes  to  sleep  and 
the  astral  body  slips  out  of  it,  we  have  the  man  himself 
before  us  in  full  consciousness ;  the  astral  body  is  clearly 
outlined  and  definitely  organized,  bearing  the  likeness 
of  the  man,  and  the  man  is  able  to  use  it  as  a  vehicle — 
a  vehicle  far  more  convenient  than  the  physical.  He  is 
wide  awake,  and  is  working  far  more  actively,  more  ac- 
curately, with  greater  power  of  comprehension,  than 
when  he  is  confined  in  the  denser  physical  vehicle,  and 
he  can  move  about  freely  and  with  immense  rapidity 
at  any  distance,  without  causing  the  least  disturbance 
to  the  sleeping  body  on  the  bed. 

If  such  a  person  has  not  yet  learned  to  link  together 
his  astral  and  physical  vehicles,  if  there  be  a  break  in 
consciousness  when  the  astral  body  slips  out  as  he  falls 
asleep,  then,  while  he  himself  will  be  wide  awake  and 
fully  conscious  on  the  astral  plane,  he  will  not  be 
able  to  impress  on  the  physical  brain  on  his  return  to 
his  denser  vehicle  the  knowledge  of  what  he  has  been 


49 


doing  during  his  absence ;  under  these  circumstances 
his  ''waking"  consciousness — as  it  is  the  habit  to  term 
the  most  limited  form  of  our  consciousness — will  not 
share  the  man's  experiences  in  the  astral  world,  not  be- 
cause he  does  not  know  them,  but  because  the  physical 
organism  is  too  dense  to  receive  these  impressions  from 
him.  Sometimes,  when  the  physical  body  awakes,  there 
is  a  feeling  that  something  has  been  experienced  of 
which  no  memory  remains;  yet  this  very  feeling  shows 
that  there  has  been  some  functioning  of  consciousness 
in  the  astral  world  away  from  the  physical  body,  though 
the  brain  is  not  sufficiently  receptive  to  have  even  an 
evanescent  memory  of  what  has  occurred.  At  other  times 
when  the  astral  body  returns  to  the  physical,  the  man 
succeeds  in  making  a  momentary  impression  on  the 
etheric  double  and  dense  body,  and  when  the  latter 
awake  there  is  a  vivid  memory  of  an  experience  gained 
in  the  astral  world ;  but  the  memory  quickly  vanishes 
and  refuses  to  be  recalled,  every  effort  rendering  suc- 
cess more  impossible,  as  each  effort  sets  up  strong  vi- 
brations in  the  physical  brain,  and  still  further  over- 
powers the  subtler  vibrations  of  the  astral.  Or  yet  again, 
the  man  may  succeed  in  impressing  new  knowledge  on 
the  physical  brain  without  being  able  to  convey  the 
memory  of  where  or  how  that  knowledge  was  gained ;  in 
such  cases  ideas  will  arise  in  the  waking  consciousness 
as  though  spontaneously  generated,  solutions  will  come 
of  problems  before  uncomprehended,  light  will  be 
thrown  on  questions  before  obscure.  When  this  occurs, 
it  is  an  encouraging  sign  of  progress,  showing  that  the 


50 


astral  bod}^  is  well  organized  and  is  functioning  actively 
in  the  astral  world,  although  the  physical  body  is  still 
but  very  partially  receptive.  Sometimes,  however,  the 
man  succeeds  in  making  the  physical  brain  respond,  and 
then  we  have  what  is  regarded  as  a  very  vivid,  reason- 
able, and  coherent  dream,  the  kind  of  dream  which  most 
thoughtful  people  have  occasionally  enjoyed,  in  which 
they  feel  more  alive,  not  less,  than  when  "awake,"  and 
in  which  they  may  even  receive  knowledge  which  is  help- 
ful to  them  in  their  physical  life.  All  these  are  stages 
of  progress,  marking  the  evolution  and  improving  or- 
ganization of  the  astral  body. 

But  on  the  other  hand  it  is  well  to  understand  that 
persons  who  are  making  real  and  even  rapid  progress 
in  spirituality  may  be  functioning  most  actively  and 
usefully  in  the  astral  world  without  impressing  on  the 
brain  when  they  return  the  slightest  memory  of  the 
work  in  which  they  have  been  engaged,  although  they 
may  be  aware  in  their  lower  consciousness  of  an  ever- 
increasing  illumination  and  widening  knowledge  of 
spiritual  truth.  There  is  one  fact  which  all  students 
may  take  as  a  matter  of  encouragement,  and  on  which 
they  may  rely  with  confidence,  however  blank  their 
physical  memory  may  be  as  regards  super-physical  ex- 
periences :  as  we  learn  to  work  more  and  more  for  others, 
as  we  endeavour  to  become  more  and  more  useful  to  the 
world,  as  we  grow  stronger  and  steadier  in  our  devotion 
to  the  Elder  Brothers  of  humanity,  and  seek  ever  more 
earnestly  to  perform  perfectly  our  little  share  in  Their 
great  work,   we   are   inevitably  developing  that   astral 


51 


body  and  that  power  of  functioning  in  it  which  render 
us  more  efficient  servants ;  whether  with  or  without  phy- 
sical memory,  we  leave  our  physical  prisons  in  deep 
sleep  and  work  along  useful  lines  of  activity  in  the  astral 
world,  helping  people  we  should  otherwise  be  unable  to 
reach,  aiding  and  comforting  in  ways  we  could  not  other- 
wise employ.  This  evolution  is  going  on  with  those  who 
are  pure  in  mind,  elevated  in  thought,  with  their  hearts 
set  on  the  desire  to  serve.  They  may  be  working  for 
many  a  year  in  the  astral  world  without  bringing  back 
the  memory  to  their  lower  consciousness,  and  exercising 
powers  for  good  to  the  world  far  beyond  anything  of 
which  they  suppose  themselves  to  be  capable:  to  them, 
when  Karma  permits,  shall  come  the  full  unbroken 
consciousness  which  passes  at  will  between  the  physical 
and  astral  worlds;  the  bridge  shall  be  made  which  lets 
the  memory  cross  from  one  to  the  other  without  effort, 
so  that  the  man  returning  from  his  activities  in  the 
astral  world  will  don  again  his  physical  vesture  without 
a  moment's  loss  of  consciousness.  This  is  the  certainty 
that  lies  before  all  those  who  choose  the  life  of  service. 
They  will  one  day  acquire  this  unbroken  consciousness; 
and  then  to  them  life  shall  no  longer  be  composed  of 
days  of  memoried  work  and  nights  of  oblivion,  but  it 
will  be  a  continous  whole,  the  body  put  aside  to  take  the 
rest  necessary  for  it,  while  the  man  himself  uses  the 
astral  body  for  his  work  in  the  astral  world;  then 
they  will  keep  the  links  of  thought  unbroken, 
knowing  when  they  leave  the  physical  body, 
knowing  while  they  are  passing  out  of  it,  knowing  their 


52 


life  away  from  it,  knowing  when  they  return  and  again 
put  it  on :  thus  they  will  carry  on  week  after  week,  year 
after  year,  the  unbroken,  unwearied  consciousness  which 
gives  the  absolute  certainty  of  the  existence  of  the  in- 
dividual Self,  of  the  fact  that  the  body  is  only  a  gar- 
ment that  they  wear,  put  on  and  off  at  pleasure,  and  not 
a  necessary  instrument  of  thought  and  life.  They  will 
know  that  so  far  from  its  being  necessary  to  either,  life 
is  far  more  active,  thought  far  more  untrammelled  with- 
out it. 

I  When  this  stage  is  reached  a  man  begins  to  under- 
stand the  world  and  his  own  life  in  it  far  better  than 
he  did  before,  begins  to  realize  more  of  what  lies  in  front 
of  him,  more  of  the  possibilities  of  the  higher  humanity. 
Slowly  he  sees  that  just  as  man  acquires  first  physical 
and  then  astral  consciousness,  so  there  stretch  above  him 
other  and  far  higher  ranges  of  consciousness  that  he 
may  acquire  one  after  the  other,  becoming  active  on 
loftier  planes,  ranging  through  wider  worlds,  exercising 
vaster  powers,  and  all  as  the  servant  of  the  Holy  Ones 
for  the  assistance  and  benefit  of  humanity.  Then  phy- 
sical life  begins  to  assume  its  true  proportion,  and  noth- 
ing that  happens  in  the  physical  world  can  affect  him 
as  it  did  ere  he  knew  the  fuller,  richer  life,  and  nothing 
that  death  can  do  can  touch  him  either  in  himself  or  in 
those  he  desires  to  assist.  The  earth-life  takes  its  true 
place  as  the  smallest  part  of  human  activity,  and  it  can 
never  again  be  as  dark  as  it  used  to  be,  for  the  light  of 
the  higher  regions  shines  down  into  its  obscurest  recesses. 
Turning  from  the  study  of  the  functions  and  possi- 


53 


)ilities  of  the  astral  body,  let  us  consider  now  certain 
)henomena  connected  with  it.  It  may  show  itself  to 
ither  people  apart  from  the  physical  body,  either  during 
•r  after  earth-life.  A  persoii  who  has  complete  mastery 
>ver  the  astral  body  can,  of  course,  leave  the  physical 
.t  any  time  and  go  to  a  friend  at  a  distance.  If  the 
)erson  thus  visited  be  clairvoyant,  i.e.,  has  developed 
.stral  sight,  he  will  see  his  friend's  astral  body  if  not, 
uch  a  visitor  might  slightly  densify  his  vehicle  by  draw- 
ng  into  it  from  the  surrounding  atmosphere  particles 
f  physical  matter,  and  thus  "materialize"  sufficiently 
0  make  himself  visible  to  physical  sight.  This  is  the 
xplanation  of  many  of  the  appearances  of  friends  at  a 
[istance,  phenomena  which  are  far  more  common  than 
Qost  people  imagine,  owing  to  the  reticence  of  timid 
oik  who  are  afraid  of  being  laughed  at  as  superstitious, 
^'ortunately  that  fear  is  lessening,  and  if  people  would 
•nly  have  the  courage  and  common  sense  to  say  what 
hey  know  to  be  true,  we  should  soon  have  a  large  mass 
f  evidence  on  the  appearances  of  people  whose  physical 
>odies  are  far  away  from  the  places  where  their  astral 
lodies  show  themselves.  These  bodies  may,  under  cer- 
ain  circumstances,  be  seen  by  those  who  do  not  normally 
xercise  astral  vision,  without  materialization  being  re- 
orted  to.  If  a  person's  nervous  system  be  overstrained 
-nd  the  physical  body  be  in  weak  health  so  that  the 
)ulses  of  vitality  throb  less  strongly  than  usual,  the 
lervous  activity  so  largely  dependent  on  the  etheric 
Louble  may  be  unduly  stimulated,  and  under  these  con- 
Litions  the  man  may  become  temporarily   clairvoyant. 


54 


A  mother,  for  instance,  who  knows  her  son  to  be  dan- 
gerously ill  in  a  foreign  land,  and  who  is  racked  by 
anxiety  about  him,  may  thus  become  susceptible  to  as- 
tral vibrations,  especially  in  the  hours  of  the  night  at 
which  vitality  is  at  its  lowest ;  under  these  conditions,  if 
her  son  be  thinking  of  her,  and  his  physical  body  be  un- 
conscious, so  as  to  permit  him  to  visit  her  astrally,  she 
will  be  likely  to  see  him.  More  often  such  a  visit  is  made 
when  the  person  has  just  shaken  off  the  physical  body 
at  death.  These  appearances  are  by  no  means  uncom- 
mon, especially  where  the  dying  person  has  a  strong 
wish  to  reach  some  one  to  whom  he  is  closely  bound  by 
affection,  or  where  he  desires  to  communicate  some  par- 
ticular piece  of  information,  and  has  passed  away  with- 
out fulfilling  his  wish. 

If  we  follow  the  astral  body  after  death,  when  the 
etheric  double  has  been  shaken  off  as  well  as  the  dense 
body,  we  shall  observe  a  change  in  its  appearance.  Dur- 
ing its  connection  with  the  physical  body  the  sub-states 
of  astral  matter  are  intermixed  with  each  other,  the 
denser  and  the  rarer  kinds  interpenetrating  and  inter- 
mingling. But  after  death  a  re-arrangement  takes  place, 
and  the  particles  of  the  different  sub-states  separate 
from  each  other,  and,  as  it  were,  sort  themselves  out  in 
the  order  of  their  respective  densities,  the  astral  body 
thus  assuming  a  stratified  condition,  or  becoming  a  series 
of  concentric  shells  of  which  the  densest  is  outside.  And 
here  we  are  again  met  with  the  importance  of  purifying 
the  astral  body  during  our  life  on  earth,  for  we  find  that 
it  cannot,  after  death,  range  the  astral  world  at  will ;  that 


55 


world  has  its  seven  sub-planes,  and  the  man  is  confined 
to  the  sub-plane  to  which  the  matter  of  his  external 
shell  belongs;  as  this  outermost  covering  disintegrates 
he  rises  to  the  next  sub-plane,  and  so  on  from  one  to 
another.  A  man  of  very  low  and  animal  tendencies 
would  have  in  his  astral  body  much  of  the  grossest  and 
densest  kind  of  astral  matter,  and  this  would  hold  him 
down  on  the  lowest  level  of  Kamaloka ;  until  this  shell 
is  disintegrated  to  a  great  extent  the  man  must  remain 
imprisoned  in  that  section  of  the  astral  world,  and  suffer 
the  annoyances  of  that  most  undesirable  locality.  When 
this  outermost  shell  is  sufficiently  disintegrated  to  allow 
escape,  the  man  passes  to  the  next  level  of  the  astral 
world,  or  perhaps  it  is  more  accurate  to  say  that  he  is 
able  to  come  into  contact  with  the  vibrations  of  the  next 
Rub-plane  of  astral  matter,  thus  seeming  to  himself  to 
be  in  a  different  region ;  there  he  remains  till  the  shell 
of  the  sixth  sub-plane  is  worn  away  and  permits  his  pas- 
sage to  the  fifth,  his  stay  on  each  sub-plane  correspond- 
ing to  the  strength  of  those  parts  of  his  nature  repre- 
sented in  the  astral  body  by  the  amount  of  the  matter 
belonging  to  that  sub-plane.  The  greater  the  quantity 
then  of  the  grosser  sub-states  of  matter,  the  longer  the 
stay  on  the  lower  kamalokic  levels,  and  the  more  we  can 
get  rid  of  those  elements  here  the  briefer  will  be  the  de- 
lay on  the  other  side  of  death.  Even  where  the  grosser 
materials  are  not  eliminated  completely — a  process  long 
and  difficult  being  necessary  for  their  entire  eradication 
— the  consciousness  may  during  earth  life  be  so  persis- 
tently withdrawn  from  the  lower  passions  that  the  mat- 


56 


ter  by  which  they  can  find  expression  will  cease  to  func- 
tion actively  as  a  vehicle  of  consciousness — will  become 
atrophied,  to  borrow  a  physical  analogy.  In  such  case, 
though  the  man  will  be  held  for  a  short  time  on  the 
lower  levels,  he  will  sleep  peacefully  through  them,  feel- 
ing none  of  the  disagreeables  accompanying  them;  his 
consciousness,  having  ceased  to  seek  expression  through 
such  kinds  of  matter,  will  not  pass  outwards  through 
them  to  contact  objects  composed  of  them  in  the  astral 
world. 

The  passage  through  Kamaloka  of  one  who  has  so 
purified  the  astral  body  that  he  has  only  retained  in  it 
the  purest  and  finest  elements  of  each  sub-plane —  such 
as  would  at  once  pass  into  the  matter  of  the  sub-plane 
next  above  if  raised  another  degree — is  swift  indeed. 
There  is  a  point  known  as  the  critical  point  between 
every  pair  of  sub-states  of  matter;  ice  may  be  raised  to 
a  point  at  which  the  least  increment  of  heat  will  change 
it  into  liquid ;  water  may  be  raised  to  a  point  at  which 
the  next  increment  will  change  it  into  vapour.  So  each 
sub-state  of  astral  matter  may  be  carried  to  a  point  of 
fineness  at  which  any  additional  refinement  would  trans- 
form it  into  the  next  sub-state.  If  this  has  been  done 
for  every  sub-state  of  matter  in  the  astral  body,  if  it  has 
been  purified  to  the  last  possible  degree  of  delicacy,  then 
its  passage  through  Kamaloka  will  be  of  inconceivable 
rapidity,  and  the  man  will  flash  through  it  untrammelled 
in  his  flight  to  loftier  regions. 

One  other  matter  remains  in  connection  with  the 
purification  of  the  astral  body,   both  by  physical  and 


57 


mental  processes,  and  that  is  the  effect  of  such  purifica- 
tion on  the  new  astral  body  that  will  in  due  course  of 
time  be  formed  for  use  in  the  next  succeeding  incarna- 
tion. When  the  man  passes  out  of  Kamaloka  into 
Devachan,  he  cannot  carry  thither  with  him  thought- 
forms  of  an  evil  type ;  astral  .matter  cannot  exist  on  the 
devachanic  level,  and  devachanic  matter  cannot  answer 
to  the  coarse  vibrations  of  evil  passions  and  desires. 
Consequently  all  that  the  man  can  carry  with  him  when 
he  finally  shakes  off  the  remnants  of  his  astral  body  will 
be  the  latent  germs  or  tendencies  which,  when  they  can 
find  nutriment  or  outlet,  manifest  as  evil  desires  and 
passions  in  the  astral  world.  But  these  he  does  take 
with  him,  and  they  lie  latent  throughout  his  devachanic 
life.  When  he  returns  for  rebirth  he  brings  these  back 
with  him  and  throws  them  outwards;  they  draw  to 
themselves  from  the  astral  world  by  a  kind  of  magnetic 
affinity  the  appropriate  materials  for  their  manifesta- 
tion, and  clothe  themselves  in  astral  matter  congruous 
with  their  own  nature,  so  forming  part  of  the  man's 
astral  body  for  the  impending  incarnation.  Thus  we 
are  not  only  living  in  an  astral  body  now,  but  are  fash- 
ioning the  type  of  the  astral  body  which  will  be  ours  in 
another  birth — one  reason  the  more  for  purifying  the 
present  astral  body  to  the  utmost,  using  our  present 
knowledge  to  insure  our  future  progress. 

For  all  our  lives  are  linked  together,  and  none  of 
them  can  be  broken  away  from  those  that  lie  behind  it 
or  from  those  that  stretch  in  front.  In  truth,  we  have 
but  one  life,  i]i  which  wliat  we  call  lives  are  really  only 


58 


days.  We  never  begin  a  new  life  with  a  clean  sheet  on 
which  to  write  an  entirely  new  story;  we  do  but  begin 
a  new  chapter  which  must  develop  the  old  plot.  We 
can  no  more  get  rid  of  the  karmic  liabilities  of  a  pre- 
ceding life  by  passing  through  death,  than  we  can  get 
rid  of  the  pecuniary  liabilities  incurred  on  one  day  by 
sleeping  through  a  night;  if  we  incur  a  debt  to-day  we 
are  not  free  of  it  to-morrow,  but  the  claim  is  presented 
until  it  is  discharged.  The  life  of  man  is  continuous, 
unbroken;  the  earth-lives  are  linked  together,  and  not 
isolated.  The  processes  of  purification  and  development 
are  also  continuous,  and  must  be  carried  on  through 
many  successive  earth-lives.  Some  time  or  other  each 
of  us  must  begin  the  work ;  some  time  or  other  each  will 
grow  weary  of  the  sensations  of  the  lower  nature,  weary 
of  being  in  subjection  to  the  animal,  weary  of  the  ty- 
ranny of  the  senses.  Then  the  man  will  no  longer  con-, 
sent  to  submit,  he  will  decide  that  the  bonds  of  his  cap- 
tivity shall  be  broken.  Why,  indeed,  should  we  prolong 
our  bondage,  when  it  is  in  our  own  power  to  break  it 
at  any  moment?  No  hand  can  bind  us  save  our  own, 
and  no  hand  save  our  own  can  set  us  free.  We  have 
our  right  of  choice,  our  freedom  of  will,  and  inasmuch 
as  one  day  we  shall  all  stand  together  in  the  higher 
world,  why  should  we  not  begin  at  once  to  break  our 
bondage,  and  to  claim  our  divine  birthright?  The  be- 
ginning of  the  shattering  of  the  fetters,  of  the  winning 
of  liberty,  is  when  a  man  determines  that  he  will  make 
the  lower  nature  the  servant  of  the  higher,  that  here 
on  the  plane  of  physical  consciousness  he  will  begin  the 


59 


building  of  the  higher  bodies,  and  will  seek  to  realize 
those  loftier  possibilities  which  are  his  by  right  divine, 
and  are  only  obscured  by  the  animal  in  which  he  lives. 


60 


The  Mind  Bodies. 

We  have  already  studied  at  some  length  the  physical 
and  astral  bodies  of  man.  We  have  studied  the  physi- 
cal bqth  in  its  visible  and  invisible  parts,  working  on 
the  physical  plane ;  we  have  followed  the  various  lines 
of  its  activities,  have  analj^zed  the  nature  of  its  growth, 
and  have  dwelt  upon  its  gradual  purification.  Then  we 
have  considered  the  astral  body  in  a  similar  fashion, 
tracing  its  growth  and  functions,  dealing  with  the  phe- 
nomena connected  with  its  manifestation  on  the  astral 
plane,  and  also  with  its  purification.  Thus  we  have 
gained  some  idea  of  human  activity  on  two  out  of  the 
seven  great  planes  of  our  universe.  Having  done  so, 
we  can  now  pass  on  to  the  third  great  plane,  the  mind 
world ;  when  we  have  learned  something  of  this  we  shall 
have  under  our  eyes  the  physical,  the  astral,  and  the 
mental  worlds — our  globe  and  the  two  spheres  surround- 
ing it — as  a  triple  region,  wherein  man  is  active  during 
his  earthly  incarnations  and  wherein  he  dwells  also  dur- 
ing the  periods  which  intervene  between  the  death  that 
closes  one  earth-life  and  the  birth  which  opens  another. 
These  three  concentric  spheres  are  man's  school-house 
and  kingdom :  in  them  he  works  out  his  development,  in 
them  his  evolutionary  pilgrimage ;  beyond  them  he  may 
not  consciously  pass  until  the  gateway  of  Initiation  has 
opened  before  him,  for  out  of  these  three  worlds  there  is 
no  other  way. 

This  third  region  that  I  have  called  the  mind  world 


61 


includes,  though  it  is  not  identical  with,  that  which  is 
familiar  to  Theosophists  under  the  name  of  Devachan 
or  Devaloka,  the  land  of  the  Gods,  the  happy  or  blessed 
land,  as  some  translate  it.  Devachan  bears  that  name 
because  of  its  nature  and  condition,  nothing  interfering 
with  that  world  which  may  cause  pain  or  sorrow;  it  is 
a  specially  guarded  state,  into  which  positive  evil  is  not 
allowed  to  intrude,  the  blissful  resting-place  .of  man 
in  which  he  peacefully  assimilates  the  fruits  of  his  phy- 
sical life. 

A  preliminary  word  of  explanation  regarding  the 
mind  world  as  a  whole  is  necessary  in  order  to  avoid 
confusion.  While,  like  the  other  regions,  it  is  sub-divid- 
ed into  seven  sub-planes,  it  has  the  peculiarity  that 
these  seven  are  grouped  into  two  sets — a  three  and  a  four. 
The  three  upper  sub-planes  are  technically  called  arupa, 
or  without  body,  owing  to  their  extreme  subtlety,  while 
the  four  lower  are  called  rupa,  or  with  body.  Man  has 
two  vehicles  of  consciousness,  consequently,  in  which  he 
functions  on  this  plane,  to  both  of  which  the  term  mind 
body  is  apj^licable.  The  lower  of  these,  the  one  with 
which  we  shall  first  deal,  may  however  be  allowed  to 
usurp  the  exclusive  use  of  the  name  until  a  better  one 
be  found  for  it ;  for  the  higher  one  is  known  as  the  causal 
body,  for  reasons  which  will  become  clear  further  on. 
Students  will  be  familar  with  the  distinction  between 
the  Higher  and  Lower  Manas ;  the  casual  body  is  that 
of  the  Higher  J\Ianas,  the  permanent  hody  of  the  Ego, 
or  man,  lasting  from  life  to  life ;  the  mind  body  is  that 
of  the  Lower  ]\Ianas,  lasting  after  death  and  passing  into 


62 


Devachan,  but  disintegrating  when  the  life  on  the  rupa 
levels  of  Devachan  is  over. 

(a)  The  Mind  Body. — This  vehicle  of  consciousness 
belongs  to,  and  is  formed  of,  the  matter  of  the  four 
lower  levels  of  Devachan.  While  it  is  especially  the 
vehicle  of  consciousness  for  that  part  of  the  mental 
plane,  it  works  upon  and  through  the  astral  and  physi- 
cal bodies  in  all  the  manifestations  that  we  call  those 
of  the  mind  in  our  ordinary  waking  consciousness.  In 
the  undeveloped  man,  indeed,  it  cannot  function  separ- 
ately on  its  own  plane  as  an  independent  vehicle  of 
consciousness  during  his  earthly  life,  and  when  such  a 
man  exercises  his  mental  faculties,  they  must  clothe 
themselves  in  astral  and  physical  matter  ere  he  can  be- 
come conscious  of  their  activity.  The  mind  body  is  the 
vehicle  of  the  Ego,  the  Thinker,  for  all  his  reasoning 
work,  but  during  his  early  life  it  is  feebly  organized 
and  somewhat  inchoate  and  helpless,  like  the  astral  body 
of  the  undeveloped  man. 

The  matter  of  which  the  mind  body  is  composed  is 
of  an  exceedingly  rare  and  subtle  kind.  We  have  al- 
ready seen  that  astral  matter  is  much  less  dense 
than  even  the  ether  of  the  physical  plane,  and  we  have 
now  to  enlarge  our  conception  of  matter  still  further, 
and  to  extend  it  to  include  the  idea  of  a  substance  in- 
visible to  astral  sight  as  well  as  to  physical,  far  too  sub- 
tle to  be  perceived  even  by  the  ''inner"  senses  of  man. 
This  matter  belongs  to  the  fifth  plane  counting  down- 
wards, or  the  third  plane  counting  upwards,  of  our  uni- 
verse, and  in  this  matter  the  Self  manifests  as  mind, 


63 


as  in  the  next  below  it  (the  astral)  it  manifests  as  sen- 
sation. There  is  one  marked  peculiarity  about  the  mind 
body,  as  its  outer  part  shows  itself  in  the  human  arua; 
it  grows,  increases  in  size  and  in  activity,  in- 
carnation after  incarnation,  with  the  growth  and  de- 
velopment of  the  man  himself.  This  peculiarity  is  one 
to  which  so  far  we  are  not  accustomed.  A  physical  body 
is  built  incarnation  after  incarnation,  varying  according 
to  nationality  and  sex,  but  we  think  of  it  as  very  much 
the  same  in  size  since  Atlantean  days.  In  the  astral 
body  we  found  growth  in  organiz§,tion  as  the  man  pro- 
gressed. But  the  mind  body  literally  grows  in  size  with 
the  advancing  evolution  of  the  man.  If  we  look  at  a 
very  undeveloped  person,  we  shall  find  that  the  mind 
body  is  even  difficult  to  distinguish — that  it  is  so  little 
evolved  that  some  care  is  necessary  to  see  it  at  all.  Look- 
ing then  at  a  more  advanced  man,  one  who  is  not  spirit- 
ual, but  who  has  developed  the  faculties  of  the  mind, 
who  has  trained  and  developed  the  intellect,  we  shall  find 
that  the  mind  body  is  acquiring  a  very  definite  develop- 
ment, and  that  it  has  an  organization  that  can  be  recog- 
nized as  a  vehicle  of  activity ;  it  is  a  clear  and  definitely 
outlined  object,  fine  in  material  and  beautiful  in  color, 
continually  vibrating  with  enormous  activity,  full  of 
life,  full  of  vigor,  the  expression  of  the  mind  in  the 
world  of  the  mind. 

As  regards  its  nature,  then  made  of  this  subtle  mat- 
ter; as  regards  its  functions,  the  immediate  vehicle  in 
which  the  Self  manifests  as  intellect;  as  regards  its 
growth,  growing  life  after  life  in  proportion  to  the  in- 


tellectnal  development  becoming  also  more  and  more  def- 
initely organized  as  the  attributes  and  the  qualities  of  the 
mind  become  more  and  more  clearly  marked.  It  does  not, 
like  the  astral  body,  become  a  distinct  representation  of 
the  man  in  form  and  feature,  when  it  is  working  in  con- 
nection with  the  astral  and  physical  bodies;  it  is  oval — 
egg-like — in  outline,  interpenetrating  of  course  the  phy- 
sical and  astral  bodies,  and  surrounding  them  with  a 
radiant  atmosphere  as  it  develops — becoming,  as  I  said, 
larger  and  larger  as  the  intellectual  growth  increases. 
Needless  to  say,  this  egg-like  form  becomes  a  very  beau- 
tiful and  glorious  object  as  the  man  develops  the  higher 
capacities  of  the  mind ;  it  is  not  visible  to  astral  sight, 
but  is  clearly  seen  by  the  higher  vision  which  belongs 
to  the  world  of  mind.  Just  as  an  ordinary  man  living 
in  the  physical  world  sees  nothing  of  the  astral  world — 
though  surrounded  by  it — until  the  astral  senses  are 
opened,  so  a  man  in  whom  only  the  physical  and  astral 
senses  are  active  will  see  nothing  of  the  mind  world,  or 
of  forms  composed  of  its  matter,  unless  the  mental  senses 
be  opened,  albeit  it  surrounds  us  on  every  side. 

These  keener  senses,  the  senses  which  belong  to  the 
mind  world,  differ  very  much  from  the  senses  with 
which  we  are  familiar  here.  The  very  word  '^senses" 
in  fact  is  a  misnomer,  for  we  ought  rather  to  say  the 
mental  ''sense."  The  mind  comes  into  contact  with 
the  things  of  its  own  world  as  it  were  directly  over 
its  whole  surface.  There  are  no  distinct  organs  for  sight, 
hearing,  touch,  taste,  and  smell ;  all  the  vibrations  which 
we  should  here  receive  through  separate  sense-organs, 


65 


in  that  region  give  rise  to  all  these  characteristics  at 
once  when  they  come  into  touch  with  the  mind.  The 
mind  body  receives  them  all  at  one  and  the  same  time, 
and  is  as  it  were  conscious  all  over  of  everything  which 
is  able  to  impress  it  at  all. 

It  is  not  easy  to  convey  in  words  any  clear  idea  of  the 
way  this  sense  receives  an  aggregate  of  impressions 
without  confusion,  but  it  may  perhaps  be  best  described 
by  saying  that  if  a  trained  student  passes  into  that  re- 
gion, and  there  communicates  with  another  student,  the 
mind  in  speaking  speaks  at  once  by  color,  sound,  and 
form,  so  that  the  complete  thought  is  conveyed  as  a 
colored  and  musical  picture  instead  of  only  a  fragment 
of  it  being  shown,  as  is  done  here  by  the  symbols  we  call 
words.  Some  readers  may  have  heard  of  ancient  books 
written  by  great  Initiates  in  color-language,  the  lan- 
guage of  the  Gods ;  that  language  is  known  to  many 
chelas  and  is  taken,  so  far  as  form  and  color  are  con- 
cerned, from  the  mind  world  ''speech,"  in  which  the 
vibrations  from  a  single  thought  give  rise  to  form,  to 
color,  and  to  sound.  It  is  not  that  the  mind  thinks  a 
color,  or  thinks  a  sound,  or  thinks  a  form;  it  thinks  a 
thought  a  complex  vibration  in  subtle  matter,  and  that 
thought  expresses  itself  in  all  these  ways  by  the  vibra- 
tions set  up.  The  matter  of  the  mind  world  is  constant- 
ly being  thrown  into  vibrations  which  give  birth  to  these 
colors,  to  these  sounds,  to  these  forms;  and  if  a  man 
be  functioning  in  the  mind  body  apart  from  the  astral 
and  the  physical,  he  finds  himself  entirely  freed  from 
the  limitations  of  their  sense-organs,  receptive  at  every 


66 


point  to  every  vibration  that  in  the  lower  world  would 
present  itself  as  separate  and  different  from  its  fellows. 
When,  however,  a  man  is  thinking  in  his  waking 
consciousness  and  is  working  through  his  astral  and 
physical  bodies,  then  the  thought  has  its  producer  in  the 
mind  body  and  passes  out,  first  to  the  astral  and  then 
to  the  phj^sical ;  when  we  think,  we  are  thinking  by 
our  mind  body — that  is,  the  agent  of  thought,  the 
consciousness  which  expresses  itself  as  "I."  The  ''I" 
is  illusory,  but  it  is  the  only  "I"  known  to  the  majority 
of  us.  When  we  were  dealing  with  the  consciousness 
of  the  physical  body,  we  found  that  the  man  himself 
was  not  conscious  of  all  that  was  going  on  in  the  physi- 
cal body  itself,  that  its  activities  were  partially  inde- 
pendent of  him,  that  he  was  not  able  to  think  as  the 
tiny  separate  cells  were  thinking,  that  he  did  not  really 
share  that  consciousness  of  the  body  as  a  whole.  But 
when  we  come  to  the  mind  body  we  come  to  a  region 
so  closely  identified  with  the  man  that  it  seems  to  be 
himself;  "I  think,"  ''I  know" — can  we  go  behind 
that?  The  mind  is  the  Self  in  the  mind  body,  and  it  is 
that  which  for  most  of  us  seems  the  goal  of  our  search 
after  the  Self.  But  this  is  only  true  if  we  are  confined 
to  the  waking  consciousness.  Any  one  who  has  learned 
that  the  waking  consciousness,  like  the  sensations  of  the 
astral  body,  is  only  a  stage  of  our  journey  as  we  seek 
the  Self,  and  who  has  further  learned  to  go  beyond  it, 
will  be  aware  that  this  in  its  turn  is  but  an  instrument 
of  the  real  man.  Most  of  us,  however,  as  I  say,  do  not 
separate,  cannot  separate  in  thought,  the  man  from  his 


67 


mind  body,  which  seems  to  them  to  be  his  highest  expres- 
sion, highest  vehicle,  the  highest  self  they  can  in  any  way 
touch  or  realize.  This  is  the  more  natural  and  inevitable 
in  that  the  individual,  the  man,  at  this  stage  of  evolu- 
tion, is  beginning  to  vivify  this  body  and  to  bring  it 
into  pre-eminent  activity.  He  has  vivified  the  physical 
body  as  a  vehicle  of  consciousness  in  the  past,  and  is 
using  it  in  the  present  as  a  matter  of  course.  He  is 
vivifying  the  astral  body  in  the  backward  members  of 
the  race,  but  in  very  large  numbers  this  work  is  at  least 
partially  accomplished ;  in  this  Fifth  Race  he  is  work- 
ing at  the  mind  body,  and  the  special  work  on  which 
humanity  should  now  be  engaged  is  the  building,  the 
evolution  of  this  body. 

We  are  then  much  concerned  to  understand  how 
Die  mind  body  is  built  and  how  it  grows.  It  grows  by 
thought.  Our  thoughts  are  the  materials  we  build  into 
this  mind  body;  by  the  exercise  of  our  mental  faculties, 
by  the  development  of  our  artistic  powers,  our  higher 
emotions,  we  are  literally  building  the  mind  body  day 
by  day,  each  month  and  year  of  our  lives.  If  you  are 
not  exercising  your  mental  abilities,  if  so  far  as  your 
thoughts  are  concerned  you  are  a  receptacle  and  not  a 
creator;  if  you  are  constantly  accepting  from  outside 
instead  of  forming  from  within;  if  as  you  go  through 
life  the  thoughts  of  other  people  are  crowding  into  your 
mind;  if  this  be  all  you  know  of  thought  and  of  think- 
ing, then,  life  after  life,  your  mind  body  cannot  grow; 
life  after  life  yon  come  back  very  much  as  you  went  out ; 
life  after  life  you  remain  as  an  undeveloped  individual. 


68 


For  it  is  only  by  the  exercise  of  the  mind  itself,  using 
its  faculties  creatively,  exercising  them,  working  with 
them,  constantly  exerting  them — it  is  only  by  these 
means  that  the  mind  body  can  develop,  and  that  the 
truly  human  evolution  can  proceed. 

The  very  moment  you  begin  to  realize  this  you  will 
probably  try  to  change  the  general  attitude  of  your 
consciousness  in  daily  life;  you  will  begin  to  watch  its 
working;  and  as  soon  as  you  do  this  you  will  notice 
that,  as  just  said,  a  great  deal  of  your  thinking  is  not 
your  thinking  at  all,  but  the  mere  reception  of  the 
thoughts  of  other  people ;  thoughts  that  come  you  do 
not  know  how;  thoughts  that  arrive  you  do  not  know 
whence ;  thoughts  that  take  themselves  off  again  you  do 
not  know  whither ;  and  you  will  begin  to  feel,  probably 
with  some  distress  and  disappointment,  that  instead  of 
the  mind  being  highly  evolved  it  is  little  more  than  a 
place  through  which  thoughts  are  passing.  Try  your- 
self, and  see  how  much  of  the  content  of  your  conscious- 
ness is  your  own,  and  how  much  of  it  consists  merely 
of  contributions  from  outside.  Stop  yourself  suddenly 
now  and  then  during  the  day,  and  see  what  you  are 
thinking  about,  and  on  such  a  sudden  checking  you  will 
probably  either  find  that  you  are  thinking  about  noth- 
ing— a  very  common  experience — :or  that  you  are  think- 
ing so  vaguely  that  a  very  slight  impression  is  made 
upon  anything  you  can  venture  to  call  your  mind.  When 
you  have  tried  this  a  good  many  times,  and  by  the  very 
trying  have  become  more  self-conscious  than  you  were, 
then  begin  to  notice  the  thoughts  you  find  in  your  mind. 


69 


and  see  what  difference  there  is  between  their  condition 
when  they  came  into  the  mind  and  their  condition  when 
they  go  out  of  it — what  you  have  added  to  them  during 
their  stay  with  you.  In  this  way  your  mind  will  become 
really  active,  and  will  be  exercising  its  creative  powers, 
and  if  you  be  wise  you  will  follow  some  such  process  as 
this:  first,  you  will  choose  the  thoughts  that  you  will 
allow  to  remain  in  the  mind  at  all ;  whenever  you  find  in 
the  mind  a  thought  that  is  good  you  will  dwell  upon 
it,  nourish  it,  strengthen  it,  try  to  put  into  it  more  than 
it  had  at  first,  and  send  it  out  as  a  beneficent  agent  into 
the  astral  world ;  when  you  find  in  the  mind  a  thought 
that  is  evil  you  will  turn  it  out  with  all  imaginable 
promptitude.  Presently  you  will  find  that  as  you  wel- 
come into  your  mind  all  thoughts  that  are  good  and  use- 
ful, and  refuse  to  entertain  thoughts  which  are  evil,  this 
result  will  appear :  that  more  and  more  good  thoughts 
will  flow  into  your  mind  from  without,  and  fewer  and 
fewer  evil  thoughts  will  flow  into  it.  The  effect  of  mak- 
ing your  mind  full  of  good  and  useful  thoughts  will  be 
that  it  will  act  as  a  magnet  for  all  the  similar  thoughts 
that  are  around  you;  as  you  refuse  to  give  any  sort  of 
harborage  to  evil  thoughts,  those  that  approach  you 
will  be  thrown  back  by  an  automatic  action  of  the  mind 
itself.  The  mind  body  will  take  on  the  characteristic  of 
attracting  all  thoughts  that  are  good  from  the  surround- 
ing atmosphere,  and  repelling  all  thoughts  that  are  evil, 
and  it  will  work  upon  the  good  and  make  them  more 
active,  and  so  constantly  gather  a  mass  of  mental  ma- 
terial which  will  form  its  content,  and  will  grow  richer 


70 


every  year.  When  the  time  comes  when  the  man  shall 
shake  off  the  astral  and  physical  bodies  finally,  passing 
into  the  mind  world,  he  will  carry  with  him  the  whole 
of  this  gathered-up  material;  he  will  take  with  him  the 
content  of  consciousness  into  the  region  to  which  it  pro- 
perly belongs,  and  he  will  use  his  devachanic  life  in 
working  up  into  faculties  and  powers  the  whole  of  the 
n>.aterials  which  it  has  stored. 

At  the  end  of  the  devachanic  period  the  mind  body 
will  hand  on  to  the  permanent  causal  body  the  character- 
istics thus  fashioned,  that  they  may  be  carried  on  into 
the  next  incarnation.  These  faculties,  as  the  man  re- 
turns, will  clothe  themselves  in  the  matter  of  the  rupa 
planes  of  the  mind  world,  forming  the  more  highly  or- 
ganized and  developed  mind  body  for  the  coming  earth 
life,  and  they  will  show  themselves  through  the  astral 
and  physical  bodies  as  the  ' '  innate  faculties, ' '  those  with 
which  the  child  comes  into  the  world.  During  the  pres- 
ent life  we  are  gathering  together  materials  in  the  way 
which  I  have  sketched;  during  the  devachanic  life  we 
work  up  these  materials,  changing  them  from  separate 
efforts  of  thought  into  faculty  of  thought,  into  mental 
powers  and  activities.  That  is  the  immense  change  made 
during  the  devachanic  life,  and  inasmuch  as  it  is  limited 
by  the  use  we  are  making  of  the  earth-life,  we  shall  do 
well  to  spare  no  efforts  now.  The  mind  body  of  the  next 
incarnation  depends  on  the  work  we  are  doing  in  the 
mind  body  of  the  present ;  here  is  then  the  immense  im- 
portance to  the  evolution  of  the  man  of  the  use  which 
he  is  now  making  of  his  mind  body ;  it  limits  his  activities 


71 


in  Devachan,  and  by  limiting  those  activities  it  limits 
the  mental  qualities  with  which  he  will  return  for  his 
next  life  upon  earth.  We  cannot  isolate  one  life  from 
another,  nor  miraculously  create  something  out  of  noth- 
ing. Karma  brings  the  harvest  according  to  our  sowing ; 
scanty  or  plentiful  is  the  crop  as  the  laborer  gives  seed 
and  tillage. 

The  automatic  action  of  the  mind  body,  spoken  of 
above,  may  perliaps  be  better  understood  if  we  consider 
the  nature  of  the  materials  on  which  it  draws  for  its 
building.  TJie  T'uiversal  Mind,  to  which  it  is  allied  in 
its  inmost  nature,  is  the  storehouse  in  its  material  aspect 
from  which  it  draws  these  materials.  They  give  rise 
to  every  kind  of  vibration,  varying  in  quality  and  in 
power  according  to  the  combinations  made.  The  mind 
body  automatically  draws  to  itself  from  the  general 
storehouse  matter  that  can  maintain  the  combinations 
already  existing  in  it,  for  there  is  a  constant  changing 
of  particles  in  the  mind  body  as  in  the  physical,  and  the 
place  of  those  which  leave  is  taken  by  similar  particles 
that  come.  If  the  man  finds  that  he  has  evil  tendencies 
and  sets  to  work  to  change  them,  he  sets  up  a  new  set 
of  vibrations,  and  the  mind  body,  moulded  to  respond 
to  the  old  ones,  resists  the  new,  and  there  is  conflict  and 
suffering.  But  gradually,  as  the.  older  particles  are 
thrown  out  and  are  replaced  by  others  that  answer  to 
the  new  \'il3rations — being  attracted  from  outside  by 
their  very  ]>ower  to  respond  to  them — the  mind  body 
changes  its  cliaracter,  changes,  in  fact,  its  materials,  and 
its  vibrations  become  antagonistic  to  the  evil  and  attrac- 


72 


tive  to  the  good.  Hence  the  extreme  difficulty  of  the 
first  efforts,  met  and  combated  by  the  old  form-aspect 
of  the  Diind ;  hence  the  increasing  ease  of  right  thinking 
as  the  old  form  changes,  and  finally,  the  spontaneity  and 
the  pleasure  that  accompany  the  new  exercise. 

Another  way  of  helping  the  growth  of  the  mind 
body  is  the  practice  of  concentration ;  that  is,  the  fixing 
of  the  mind  on  a  point  and  holding  it  there  firmly,  not 
allowing  it  to  drift  or  wander.  We  should  train  our- 
selves in  thinking  steadily  and  consecutively,  not  al- 
lowing our  minds  to  run  suddenly  from  one  thing  to  an- 
other, nor  to  fritter  their  energies  away  over  a  large 
numbe]'  of  insignificant  thoughts.  It  is  a  good  practice 
to  follow  a  consecutive  line  of  reasoning,  in  which  one 
thought  grows  naturally  out  of  the  thought  that  went 
before  it,  thus  gradually  developing  in  ourselves  the  in- 
tellectual qualities  which  make  our  thoughts  sequential 
and  therefore  essentially  rational;  for  when  the  mind 
thus  works,  thought  following  thought  in  definite  and 
orderly  succession,  it  is  strengthening  itself  as  an  in- 
strument of  the  Self  for  activity  in  the  mind  world. 
This  development  of  the  power  of  thinking  with  con- 
centration and  sequence  will  show  itself  in  a  more  clearly 
outlined  and  definite  mind  body,  in  a  rapidly  increasing 
growth,  in  steadiness  and  balance,  the  efforts  being  well 
repaid  by  the  progress  which  results  from  them. 

(&)  The  Causal  Body. — Let  us  now  pass  on  to  the 
second  mind  body,  known  by  its  own  distinctive  name  of 
causal  body.  The  name  is  due  to  the  fact  that  all  the 
causes  reside  in  this  bodv  which  manifest  themselves  as 


73 


effects  on  the  lower  planes.  This  body  is  the  "body  of 
of  Manas, ' '  the  form-aspect  of  the  individual,  of  the  true 
man.  It  is  the  receptacle,  the  storehouse,  in  which  all 
the  man's  treasures  are  stored  for  eternity,  and  it  grows 
as  the  lower  nature  hands  up  more  and  more  that  is 
worthy  to  be  built  into  its  structure.  The  causal  body  is 
that  into  which  everything  is  woven  which  can  endure, 
and  in  which  are  stored  the  germs  of  every  quality,  to 
be  carried  over  to  the  next  incarnation ;  thus  the  lower 
manifestations  depend  wholly  on  the  growth  and  de- 
velopment of  this  man  for  ''whom  the  hour  never 
strikes. ' ' 

The  causal  body,  it  is  said  above,  is  the  form-aspect 
of  the  individual.  Dealing,  as  we  do  here,  only  with  the 
present  human  cycle,  we  may  say  that  until  that  comes 
into  existence  there  is  no  man;  there  may  be  the  physi- 
cal and  etheric  tabernacles  prepared  for  his  habitation; 
passions,  emotions,  and  appetites  may  gradually  be 
gathered  to  form  the  kamic  nature  in  the  astral  body; 
but  there  is  not  man  until  the  growth  through  the  physi- 
cal and  astral  planes  has  been  accomplished,  and  until 
the  matter  of  the  mind  world  is  beginning  to  show  it- 
self within  the  evolved  lower  bodies.  When,  by  the  pow- 
er of  the  Self  preparing  its  own  habitation,  the  matter 
of  the  mind  plane  begins  slowly  to  evolve,  then  there  is 
a  downpouring  from  the  great  ocean  of  Atma-Buddhi 
which  is  ever  brooding  over  the  evolution  of  man — and 
this,  as  it  were,  meets  the  upward-growing,  unfolding 
mind  stuff,  comes  into  union  with  it,  fertilizes  it,  and  at 
that  point  of  union  the  causal  body,  the  individual,  is 


74 


formed.  Those  who  are  able  to  see  in  those  lofty  regions 
say  that  this  form-aspect  of  the  true  man  is  like  a  deli- 
cate film  of  subtlest  matter,  just  visible,  marking  where 
the  individual  begins  his  separate  life ;  that  delicate, 
colorless  film  of  subtle  matter  is  the  body  that  lasts 
through  the  whole  of  the  human  evolution,  the  thread 
on  which  all  the  lives  are  strung,  the  re -incarnating 
Sutratma,  the  ''thread-self."  It  is  the  receptacle  of  all 
which  is  in  accordance  with  the  Law,  of  every  attribute 
which  is  noble  and  harmonious  and  therefore  enduring. 
It  is  that  which  marks  the  growth  of  man,  the  stage  of 
evolution  to  which  he  has  attained.  Every  great  and 
noble  thought,  every  pure  and  lofty  emotion,  is  carried 
up  and  worked  into  his  substance. 

Let  us  take  the  life  of  an  ordinary  man  and  try  to 
see  how  much  of  that  life  will  pass  upwards  for  the 
building  of  the  causal  body,  and  let  us  imagine  it  pic- 
torially  as  a  delicate  film ;  it  is  to  be  strengthened,  to  be 
made  beautiful  with  color,  made  active  with  life,  made 
radiant  and  glorious,  increasing  in  size  as  the  man  grows 
and  develops.  At  a  low  stage  of  evolution  he  is  not 
showing  much  mental  quality,  but  rather  he  is  manifest- 
ing much  passion,  much  appetite.  He  feels  sensations 
and  seeks  them;  they  are  the  things  to  which  he  turns. 
It  is  as  though  this  inner  life  of  the  man  put  forth  a 
little  of  the  delicate  matter  of  which  it  is  composed,  and 
round  that  the  mind  body  gathers;  and  the  mind  body 
puts  forth  into  the  astral  world,  and  there  comes  into 
contact  with  the  astral  body,  and  becomes  connected 
with  it,  so  that  a  bridge  is  formed  along  which  anything 


75 


capable  of  passing  can  pass.  The  man  sends  his  thoughts 
downwards  by  this  bridge  into  the  world  of  sensations, 
of  passions,  of  animal  life,  and  the  thoughts  intermingle 
with  all  of  these  animal  passions  and  emotions ;  thus  the 
mind  body  becomes  entangled  with  the  astral  body,  and 
they  adhere  to  each  other  and  are  difficult  to  separate 
when  the  time  of  death  comes.  But  if  the  man,  during 
the  life  which  he  is  spending  in  these  lower  regions,  has 
an  unselfish  thought,  a  thought  of  service  to  some  one  he 
loves,  and  makes  some  sacrifice  in  order  to  do  service  to 
his  friend,  he  has  then  set  up  something  that  is  able  to 
endure,  something  that  is  able  to  live,  something  that  has 
in  it  the  nature  of  the  higher  world ;  that  can  pass  up- 
wards to  the  causal  body  and  be  worked  into  its  sub- 
stance, making  it  more  beautiful,  giving  it,  perhaps,  its 
first  touch  of  intensity  of  color;  perhaps  all  through 
the  man's  life  there  will  only  be  a  few  of  these  things 
that  are  able  to  endure,  to  serve  as  food  for  the  growth 
of  the  real  man.  So  the  growth  is  very  slow,  for  all  the 
rest  of  his  life  does  not  aid  it;  all  his  evil  tendencies, 
born  of  ignorance  and  fed  by  exercise,  have  their  germs 
drawn  inward  and  thrown  into  latency  as  the  astral 
body  which  gave  them  home  and  form  is  dissipated  in 
the  astral  world;  they  are  drawn  inward  into  the  mind 
body  and  lie  latent  there,  lacking  material  for  expres- 
sion in  the  ^devachanic  world ;  when  the  mind  body  in  its 
turn  perishes,  the}^  are  drawn  into  the  causal  body,  and 
there  still  lie  latent,  as  in  suspended  animation.  They 
are  thrown  outwards  as  the  Ego,  returning  to  earth-life, 
reaches  the  astral  world,  reappearing  there  as  evil  ten- 


76 


dencies  brought  over  from  the  past.  Thus  the  causal 
body  may  be  spoken  of  as  the  storehouse  of  evil  as  well 
as  good,  being  all  that  remains  of  the  man  after  the 
lower  vehicles  are  dissipated,  but  the  good  is  worked  in- 
to its  texture  and  aids  its  growth,  while  the  evil,  with  the 
exception  noted  below,  remains  as  germ. 

But  the  evil  which  a  man  works  in  life,  when  he  puts 
into  execution  his  thought,  does  more  injury  to  the  causal 
bod}^  than  merely  to  lie  latent  in  it,  as  the  germ  of  future 
sin  and  sorrow.  It  is  not  only  that  the  evil  does  not 
help  the  growth  of  the  true  man,  but  where  it  is  subtle 
and  persistent  it  drags  away,  if  the  expression  may  be 
permitted,  something  of  the  individual  himself.  If  vice 
be  persistent,  if  evil  be  continually  followed,  the  mind 
body  becomes  so  entangled  with  the  astral  that  after 
death  it  cannot  free  itself  entirely,  and  some  of  its  very 
substance  is  torn  away  f]*om  it,  and  when  the  astral  dis- 
sipates this  goes  back  to  the  mind  stuff  of  the  mind 
world  and  is  lost  to  the  individual ;  in  this  way,  if  we 
think  again  of  our  image  of  a  film,  or  bubble,  it  may  be 
to  some  extent  thinned  by  vicious  living — not  only  de- 
layed in  its  progress,  but  something  wrought  upon  it 
which  makes  it  more  difficult  to  build  into.  It  is  as 
though  the  film  were  in  some  way  affected  as  to  capacity 
of  growth,  sterilized  or  atrophied  to  some  extent.  Be- 
yond this,  in  ordinary  cases,  the  harm  wrought  to  the 
causal  body  does  not  go. 

But  where  the  Ego  has  become  strong  both  in  in- 
tellect and  will  without  at  the  same  time  increasing  in 
unselfishness  and  love,  where  it  contracts  itself  round  its 


77 


own  separated  centre  instead  of  expanding  as  it  grows, 
building  a  wall  of  selfishness  around  it  and  using  its 
developing  powers  for  the  "I"  instead  of  for  the  all; 
in  such  cases  arises  the  possibility  alluded  to  in  so  many 
of  the  world-scriptures,  of  more  dangerous  and  ingrained 
evil,  of  the  Ego  setting  itself  consciously  against  the 
Law,  of  fighting  deliberately  against  evolution.  Then  the 
causal  body  itself,  wrought  on  by  vibrations  on  the  men- 
tal plane  of  intellect  and  will,  but  both  turned  to  selfish 
ends,  shows  the  dark  hues  which  result  from  contraction, 
and  loses  the  dazzling  radiance  which  is  its  characteris- 
tic property.  Such  harm  cannot  be  worked  by  a  poorly 
developed  Ego  nor  by  ordinary  passional  or  mental 
faults ;  to  effect  injury  so  far  reaching  the  Ego  must  be 
highly  evolved,  and  must  have  its  energies  potent  on  the 
manasic  plane.  Therefore  is  it  that  ambition,  pride,  and 
the  powers  of  the  intellect  used  for  selfish  aims  are  so 
far  more  dangerous,  so  far  more  deadly  in  their  effects, 
than  the  more  palpable  faults  of  the  lower  nature,  and 
the  ''Pharisee"  is  often  further  from  the  "kingdom  of 
God"  than  ''the  publican  and  the  sinner."  Along  this 
line  is  developed  the  "black  magician,"  the  man  who 
conquers  passion  and  desire,  develops  will  and  the  higher 
powers  of  the  mind,  not  to  gladly  offer  them  as  forces 
to  help  forward  the  evolution  of  the  whole,  but  in  order 
to  grasp  all  he  can  for  himself  as  unit,  to  hold  and  not 
to  share.  These  set  themselves  to  maintain  separation 
as  against  unity,  they  strive  to  retard  instead  of  to 
quicken  evolution ;  therefore  they  vibrate  in  discord  with 
the  whole  instead  of  in  harmony,  and  are  in  danger  of 


78 


that  rending  of  the  Ego  which  means  the  loss  of  all  the 
fi'uits  of  evolution. 

All  of  us  who  are  beginning  to  understand  some- 
thing of  this  causal  body  can  make  its  evolution  a  defi- 
nite object  in  our  life ;  we  can  strive  to  think  unselfishly 
and  so  contribute  to  its  growth  and  activity.  Life  after 
life,  century  after  century,  millennium  after  millennium, 
this  evolution  of  the  individual  proceeds,  and  in  aiding 
its  growth  by  conscious  effort  we  are  working  in  har- 
mony with  the  divine  will,  and  carrying  out  the  purpose 
for  which  we  are  here.  Nothing  good  that  is  once  woven 
into  the  texture  of  this  causal  body  is  ever  lost,  nothing 
is  dissipated ;  for  this  is  the  man  that  lives  for  ever. 

Thus  we  see  that  by  the  law  of  evolution  everything 
that  is  evil,  however  strong  for  the  time  it  may  seem, 
has  within  itself  the  germ  of  its  own  destruction,  while 
everything  that  is  good  has  in  it  the  seed  of  immortality ; 
the  secret  of  this  lies  in  the  fact  that  everything  evil  is 
inharmonious,  that  it  sets  itself  against  the  kosmic  law; 
it  is  therefore  sooner  or  later  broken  up  by  that  law, 
dashed  into  pieces  against  it,  crushed  into  dust.  Every- 
thing that  is  good,  on  the  other  hand,  being  in  harmony 
with  the  law,  is  taken  on  by  it,  carried  forward;  it  be- 
comes part  of  the  stream  of  evolution,  of  that  **not  our- 
selves which  makes  for  righteousness,"  and  therefore  it 
can  never  perish,  can  never  be  destroyed.  Here  lies  not 
only  the  hope  of  man  but  the  certainty  of  his  final 
triumph;  however  slow  the  growth,  it  is  there;  however 
long  the  way,  it  has  its  ending.  The  individual  which 
is  our  Self  is  evolving,  and  cannot  now  be  utterly  de- 


79 


stroyed;  even  though  by  our  folly  we  may  make  the 
growth  slower  than  it  need  be,  none  the  less  everything 
we  contribute  to  it,  however  little,  lasts  in  it  for  ever, 
and  is  our  possession  for  all  the  ages  that  lie  in  front. 


80 


Other  Bodies. 

We  may  rise  one  step  further,  but  in  doing  so  we 
enter  a  region  so  lofty  it  is  well-nigh  beyond  our  tread- 
ing, even  in  imagination.  For  the  causal  body  itself  is 
not  the  highest,  and  the  ''Spiritual  Ego"  is  not  Manas, 
but  Manas  united  to,  merged  in,  Buddhi.  This  is  the 
culmination  of  the  human  evolution,  the  end  of  the  revo- 
lution on  the  wheel  of  births  and  deaths.  Above  the 
plane  with  which  we  have  been  dealing  lies  a  yet  higher, 
sometimes  called  that  of  Turiya,  the  plane  of  Buddhi.* 
Here  the  vehicle  of  consciousness  is  the  spiritual  body, 
the  Anandamayakosha,  or  body  of  bliss,  and  into  this 
Yogis  can  pass,  and  in  it  taste  the  eternal  bliss  of  that 
glorious  world,  and  realize  in  their  own  consciousness 
the  underlying  unity  which  then  becomes  to  them  a  fact 
of  experience  and  no  longer  only  an  intellectual  belief. 
We  may  read  of  a  time  that  comes  to  the  man  when  he 
has  grown  in  love,  wisdom,  and  power,  and  when  he 
passes  through  a  great  gateway,  marking  a  distinct 
stage  in  his  evolution.  It  is  the  gateway  of  Initiation, 
and  the  man  led  through  it  by  his  Master  rises  for  the 
first  time  into  the  spiritual  body,  and  experiences  in  it 
the  unity  which  underlies  all  the  diversity  of  the  physical 
world  and  all  its  separateness,  which  underlies  the  sep- 
arateness  of  the  astral  plane  and  even  of  the  mental 
region.     When  these  are  left    behind    and    the    man, 

*  This  plane  has  also    been    called    that    of    Sushupti.      See 
Manuals  iv.  and  v. 


81 


clothed  in  the  spiritual  body,  rises  beyond  them,  he  then 
finds  for  the  first  time  in  his  experience  that  separate- 
ness  belongs  only  to  the  three  lower  worlds;  that  he  is 
one  with  all  others,  and  that,  without  losing  self-con- 
sciousness, his  consciousness  can  expand  to  embrace  the 
consciousness  of  others,  can  become  verily  and  indeed 
one  with  them.  There  is  the  unity  after  which  man 
is  always  yearning,  the  unity  he  has  felt  as  true  and  has 
vainly  tried  to  realize  on  lower  planes ;  there  it  is  realiz- 
ed beyond  his  loftiest  dreamings,  and  all  humanity  is 
found  to  be  one  with  his  innermost  Self. 

Temporary  Bodies. — We  cannot  leave  out  of  our  re- 
view of  man's  bodies  certain  other  vehicles  that  are  tem- 
porary, and  may  be  called  artificial,  in  their  character. 
When  a  man  begins  to  pass  out  of  the  physical  body  he 
may  use  the  astral,  but  so  long  as  he  is  functioning  in 
that  he  is  limited  to  the  astral  world.  It  is  possible, 
however,  for  him  to  use  the  mind  body — that  of  the 
Lower  Manas — in  order  to  pass  into  the  mental  region, 
and  in  this  he  can  also  range  the  astral  and  physical 
planes  without  let  or  hinderance.  The  body  thus  used 
is  often  called  the  Mayavi  Rupa,  or  body  of  illusion,  and 
it  is  the  mind  body  re-arranged,  so  to  speak,  for  separate 
activity.  The  man  fashions  his  mind  body  into  the  like- 
ness of  himself,  shapes  it  into  his  own  image  and  likeness, 
and  is  then  in  this  temporary  and  artificial  body  free 
to  traverse  the  three  planes  at  will  and  rise  superior  to 
the  ordinary  limitations  of  man.  It  is  this  artificial 
body  that  is  often  spoken  of  in  theosophical  books,  in 
which  a  person  can  travel  from  land  to  land,  passing 


82 


also  into  the  world  of  mind,  learning  there  new  truths, 
gathering  new  experience,  and  bringing  back  to  the  wak- 
ing consciousness  the  treasures  thus  collected.  The  ad- 
vantage of  using  this  higher  body  is  that  it  is  not  sub- 
ject to  deception  and  glamour  on  the  astral  plane  as  is 
the  astral  body.  The  untrained  astral  senses  often  mis- 
lead, and  much  experience  is  needed  ere  their  reports 
can  be  trusted,  but  this  temporarily  formed  mind  body 
is  not  subject  to  such  deceptions;  it  sees  with  a  true 
vision,  it  hears  with  a  true  hearing;  no  astral  glamour 
can  overpower,  no  astral  illusion  can  deceive ;  therefore 
this  body  is  preferably  used  by  those  trained  for  such 
journeyings,  made  when  it  is  wanted,  let  go  again  when 
the  purpose  for  which  it  was  made  is  served.  Thus  it  is 
that  the  student  often  learns  lessons  that  otherwise  could 
not  reach  him,  and  receives  instructions  from  which  he 
would  otherwise  be  entirely  shut  off. 

Other  temporary  bodies  have  been  called  by  the 
name  of  Mayavi  Rupa,  but  it  seems  better  to  restrict  the 
term  to  the  one  just  described.  A  man  may  appear  at 
a  distance  in  a  body  which  is  really  a  thought-form  more 
than  a  vehicle  of  consciousness,  thought  clothed  in  the 
elemental  essence  of  the  astral  plane.  These  bodies  are, 
as  a  rule,  merely  vehicles  of  some  particular  thought, 
some  special  volition,  and  outside  this  show  no  conscious- 
ness.   They  need  only  be  mentioned  in  passing. 

The  Human  Aura. — We  are  now  in  a  position  to 
understand  wliat  the  human  aura,  in  its  fullest  sense, 
really  is.  It  is  the  man  himself,  manifest  at  once  on  the 
four  planes  of  consciousness,  and  according  to  its  de- 


velopment  is  his  power  of  functioning  on  each ;  it  is  the 
aggregate  of  his  bodies,  of  his  vehicles  of  consciousness ; 
in  a  phrase,  it  is  the  form-aspect  of  the  man.  It  is  thus 
that  we  should  regard  it,  and  not  as  a  mere  ring  or  cloud 
surrounding  him.  Most  glorious  of  all  is  the  spiritual 
body,  visible  in  Initiates,  through  which  plays  the  living 
atmic  fire;  this  is  the  manifestation  of  the  man  on  the 
buddhic  plane.  Then  comes  the  causal  body,  his 
manifestation  in  the  highest  mental  world,  on  the 
arupa  levels  of  the  plane  of  mind,  where  the  individual 
has  his  home.  Next  the  mind  body,  belonging  to  the 
lower  mental  planes,  and  the  astral,  etheric,  and  dense 
bodies  in  succession,  each  formed  of  the  matter  of  its 
own  region,  and  expressing  the  man  as  he  is  in  each. 
When  the  student  looks  at  the  human  being  he  sees  all 
these  bodies  making  up  the  man,  showing  themselves 
separately  by  virtue  of  their  different  grades  of  matter, 
and  thus  marking  the  stage  of  development  at  which 
the  man  has  arrived.  As  the  higher  vision  is  developed 
the  student  sees  each  of  these  bodies  in  its  full  activity. 
The  physical  body  is  visible  as  a  kind  of  dense  crystalli- 
zation in  the  center  of  the  other  bodies,  thq  others  perme- 
ating it  and  extending  beyond  its  periphery,  the  physical 
being  the  smallest.  The  astral  comes  next,  showing  the 
state  of  the  kamic  nature  that  forms  so  great  a  part  of 
the  ordinary  man,  full  of  his  passions,  lower  appetites, 
and  emotions,  differing  in  fineness,  in  color,  as  the  man 
is  more  or  less  pure — very  dense  in  the  grosser  types, 
finer  in  the  more  refined,  finest  of  all  if  the  man  be  far 
advanced  in  his  evolution.    Then  the  mind  body,  poorly 


84 


developed  in  the  majority  but  beautiful  in  many,  very 
various  in  coloring  according  to  the  mental  and  moral 
type.  Then  the  causal,  scarcely  visible  in  most,  visible 
only  if  careful  scrutiny  be  brought  to  bear  on  the  man, 
so  slightly  is  it  developed,  so  comparatively  thin  is  its 
coloring,  so  feeble  is  its  activity.  But  when  we  come  to 
look  at  an  advanced  soul,  it  is  this  and  the  one  above  it 
that  at  once  strike  the  eye  as  being  emphatically  the 
presentation  of  the  man ;  radiant  in  light,  most  glorious 
and  delicate  in  coloring,  showing  hues  that  no  language 
can  describe,  because  they  have  no  place  in  earth's  spec- 
trum— hues  not  only  the  most  pure  and  beautiful,  but 
entirely  different  from  the  colors  known  on  the  lower 
planes,  additional  ones  which  show  the  growth  of  the 
man  in  those  higher  regions  in  the  loftier  qualities  and 
powers  that  there  exist.  If  the  eye  be  fortunate  enough 
to  be  blessed  with  the  sight  of  one  of  the  Great  Ones, 
He  appears  as  this  mighty  living  form  of  life  and  color, 
radiant  and  glorious,  showing  forth  His  nature  by  His 
very  appearance  to  the  view;  beautiful  beyond  descrip- 
tion, resplendent  beyond  imagination.  Yet  what  He 
is  all  shall  one  day  become ;  that  which  He  is  in  ac- 
complishment dwells  in  every  son  of  man  as  possibility. 
There  is  one  point  about  the  aura  that  I  may  mention, 
as  it  is  one  of  practical  utility.  We  can  to  a  great  ex- 
tent protect  ourselves  against  the  incursions  of  thoughts 
from  outside  by  making  a  spherical  wall  round  us 
from  the  auric  substance.  The  aura  responds  very 
readily  to  the  impulse  of  thought,  and  if  by  an  effort  of 
the  imagination  we  picture  its  outer  edge  as  densified 


85 


into  a  shell,  we  really  make  such  a  protective  wall  around 
us.  This  shell  will  prevent  the  incoming  of  the  drift- 
ing thoughts  that  fill  the  astral  atmosphere,  and  thus 
will  prevent  the  disturbing  influence  they  exercise  over 
the  untrained  mind.  The  drain  on  our  vitality  that  we 
sometimes  feel,  especially  when  we  come  into  contact 
with  people  who  unconsciously  vampirise  their  neigh- 
bors, may  also  be  guarded  against  by  the  formation  of  a 
shell,  and  any  one  who  is  sensitive  and  who  finds  himself 
very  exhausted  by  such  a  drain  will  do  wisely  thus  to 
protect  himself.  Such  is  the  power  of  human  thought 
on  subtle  matter  that  to  think  of  yourself  as  within 
such  a  shell  is  to  have  it  formed  around  you. 

Looking  at  human  beings  around  us  on  every  side 
we  may  see  them  in  every  stage  of  development,  show- 
ing themselves  forth  by  their  bodies  according  to  the 
point  in  evolution  which  they  have  reached,  living  on 
plane  after  plane  of  the  universe,  functioning  in  region 
after  region,  as  they  develop  the  corresponding  vehicles 
of  consciousness.  Our  aura  shows  just  what  we  are; 
we  add  to  it  as  we  grow  in  the  true  life ;  we  purify  it  as 
we  live  noble  and  cleanly  lives;  we  weave  into  it  higher 
and  higher  qualities. 

Is  it  possible  that  any  philosophy  of  life  should  be 
more  full  of  hope,  more  full  of  strength,  more  full  of 
joy  than  this?  Looking  over  the  world  of  men  with 
the  physical  eye  only,  we  see  it  degraded,  miserable, 
apparently  hopeless,  as  in  truth  it  is  to  the  eye  of  flesh. 
But  that  same  world  of  men  appears  to  us  in  quite  an- 
other aspect  when  seen  by  the  higher  vision.     We  see 


86 


indeed  the  sorrow  and  the  misery,  we  see  indeed  the 
degradation  and  the  shai^e ;  but  we  know  that  they  are 
transient,  that  they  are  temporary,  that  they  belong  to 
the  childhood  of  the  race  and  that  the  race  will  outgrow 
them.  Looking  at  the  lowest  and  vilest,  at  the  most  de- 
graded and  most  brutal,  we  can  yet  see  their  divine  pos- 
sibilities, we  can  yet  realize  what  they  shall  be  in  the 
years  to  come.  That  is  the  message  of  hope  brought  by 
Theosophy  to  the  western  world,  the  message  of  univer- 
sal redemption  from  ignorance,  and  therefore  of  uni- 
versal emancipation  from  misery — not  in  dream  but  in 
reality,  not  in  hope  but  in  certainty.  Every  one  who  in 
his  own  life  is  showing  the  growth  is  as  it  were,  a  fresh 
realization  and  enforcement  of  the  message ;  everywhere 
the  first-fruits  are  appearing,  and  the  whole  world  shall 
one  day  be  ripe  for  the  harvest,  and  shall  accomplish 
the  purpose  for  which  the  Logos  gave  it  birth. 


87 


The  Man. 

We  have  now  to  turn  to  the  consideration  of  the  man 
himself,  no  longer  studying  the  vehicles  of  consciousness 
but  the  action  of  the  consciousness  on  them,  no  longer 
looking  at  the  bodies  but  at  the  entity  who  functions  in 
them.  By  ^'the  man"  I  mean  that  continuing  individual 
who  passes  from  life  to  life,  who  comes  into  bodies  and 
again  leaves  them,  over  and  over  again,  who  develops 
slowly  in  the  course  of  ages,  who  grows  by  the  gathering 
and  by  the  assimilation  of  experience,  and  who  exists  on 
that  higher  manasic  or  mental  plane  referred  to  in  the 
last  chapter.  This  man  is  to  be  the  subject  of  our  study, 
functioning  on  the  three  planes  with  which  we  are  now 
familiar — the  physical,  the  astral,  and  the  mental. 

Man  begins  his  experience  by  developing  self-con- 
sciousness on  the  physical  plane ;  it  is  here  that  appears 
what  we  call  the  "waking  consciousness,"  the  conscious- 
ness with  which  we  are  all  familiar,  which  works  through 
the  brain  and  nervous  system,  by  which  we  reason  in  the 
ordinary  way,  carrying  on  all  logical  processes,  by 
which  we  remember  past  events  of  the  current  incarna- 
tion, and  exercise  judgment  in  the  affairs  of  life.  All 
that  we  recognize  as  our  mental  faculties  is  the  outcome 
of  the  man's  work  through  the  preceding  stages  of  his 
pilgrimage,  and  his  self-consciousness  here  becomes  more 
and  more  vivid,  more  and  more  active,  more  and  more 
alive,  we  may  say,  as  the  individual  develops,  as  the 
man  progresses  life  after  life. 


88 


If  we  study  a  very  undeveloped  man,  we  find  his 
self-conscious  mental  activity  to  be  poor  in  quality 
and  limited  in  quantity.  He  is  working  in  the  physical 
body  through  the  gross  and  etheric  brains ;  action  is  con- 
tinually going  on,  so  far  as  the  whole  nervous  system 
is  concerned,  visible  and  invisible,  but  the  action  is  of  a 
very  clumsy  kind.  There  is  in  it  very  little  discrimina- 
tion, very  little  delicacy  of  mental  touch.  There  is 
some  mental  activity,  but  it  is  of  a  very  infantile  or 
childish  kind.  It  is  occupied  with  very  small  things ;  it 
is  amused  by  very  trivial  occurances;  the  things  that 
attract  its  attention  are  things  of  a  petty  character;  it 
is  interested  in  passing  objects;  it  likes  to  sit  at  a  win- 
dow and  look  out  at  a  busy  street,  watching  people  and 
vehicles  go  by,  making  remarks  on  them,  overwhelmed 
with  amusement  if  a  well-dressed  person  tumbles  into 
a  puddle  or  is  badly  splashed  by  a  passing  cab.  It  has 
not  much  in  itself  to  occupy  its  attention,  and  therefore 
it  is  always  rushing  outwards  in  order  to  feel  that  it  is 
alive ;  it  is  one  of  the  chief  characteristics  of  this  low 
stage  of  mental  evolution  that  the  man  working  at  the 
physical  and  etheric  bodies  and  bringing  them  into  or- 
der as  vehicles  of  consciousness,  is  always  seeking  violent 
sensations ;  he  needs  to  make  sure  that  he  is  feeling  and 
to  learn  to  distinguish  things  by  receiving  from  them 
strong  and  vivid  sensations;  it  is  a  quite  necessary 
stage  of  progress,  though  an  elementary  one,  and  with- 
out this  he  would  continually  be  becoming  confused  be- 
tween the  processes  within  his  vehicle  and  without  it; 
he  must  learn  the  alphabet  of  the  self  and  the  not-self, 


89 

by  distinguishing  between  the  objects  causing  impacts 
and  the  sensations  caused  by  impacts,  between  the  stimu- 
lus and  the  feeling.  The  lowest  types  of  this  stage  may 
J)e  seen  gathered  at  street-Xiorners,  lounging  idly  against 
a  wall,  and  indulging  occasionally  in  a  few  ejaculatory 
remarks  and  in  cackling  outbursts  of  empty  laughter. 
Any  one  able  to  look  into  their  brains  finds  that  they 
are  receiving  somewhat  blurred  impressions  from  pass- 
ing objects,  and  that  the  links  between  these  impressions 
and  others  like  them  are  very  slight.  The  impressions 
are  more  like  a  heap  of  pebbles  than  a  well-arranged 
mosaic. 

In  studying  the  way  in  which  the  physical  and  etheric 
brains  become  vehicles  of  consciousness,  we  have  to  run 
back  to  the  early  development  of  the  Ahamkara,  or 
' '  I-ness, ' '  a  stage  that  may  be  seen  in  the  lower  animals 
around  us.  Vibrations  caused  by  the  impact  of  external 
objects  are  set  up  in  the  brain,  transmitted  by  it  to  the 
astral  body,  and  felt  by  the  consciousness  as  sensations, 
before  there  is  any  linking  of  these  sensations  to  the 
objects  that  caused  them,  this  linking  being  a  definite 
mental  action — a  perception.  When  perception  begins 
the  consciousness  is  using  the  physical  and  etheric  brains 
as  a  vehicle  for  itself,  by  means  of  which  it  gathers 
knowledge  of  the  external  world.  This  stage  is  long 
past  in  our  humanity,  of  course,  but  its  fleeting  repeti- 
tion may  be  seen  when  the  consciousness  takes  up  a  new 
brain  in  coming  to  rebirth;  the  child  begins  to  'Hake 
notice,"  as  the  nurses  say,  that  is,  to  relate  a  sensation 
arising  in  itself  to  an  impression  made  upon  its  new 


90 


sheath,  or  vehicle,  by  an  external  object,  and  thus  to 
"notice"  the  object,  to  perceive  it. 

After  a  time  the  perception  of  an  object  is  not  nec- 
essary in  order  that  the  picture  of  that  object  may  be 
present  to  the  consciousness,  and  it  finds  itself  able  to 
recall  the  appearance  of  an  object  when  it  is  not  con- 
tacted b}^  any  sense ;  such  a  memoried  perception  is  an 
idea,  a  concept,  a  mental  image,  and  these  make  up  the 
store  which  the  consciousness  gathers  from  the  outside 
world.  On  these  it  begins  to  work,  and  the  first  stage  of 
this  activity  is  the  arrangement  of  the  ideas,  the  pre- 
liminary to  ''reasoning"  upon  them.  Reasoning  begins 
by  comparing  the  ideas  with  each  other,  and  then  by 
inferring  relations  between  them  from  the  simultaneous 
or  sequential  happening  of  two  or  more  of  them,  time 
after  time.  In  this  process  the  consciousness  has  with- 
drawn within  itself,  carrying  with  it  the  ideas  it  has 
made  out  of  perceptions,  and  it  goes  on  to  add  to  them 
something  of  its  own,  as  when  it  infers  a  sequence,  re- 
lates one  thing  to  another  as  cause  and  effect.  It  be- 
gins to  draw  conclusions,  even  to  forecast  future  hap- 
penings when  it  has  established  a  sequence,  so  that  when 
the  perception  regarded  as  ''cause"  appears  the  per- 
ception regarded  as  "effect"  is  expected  to  follow. 
Again,  it  notices  in  comparing  its  ideas  that  many  of 
them  have  one  or  more  elements  in  common,  while  their 
remaining  constitutents  are  different,  and  it  proceeds 
to  draw  these  common  characteristics  away  from  the 
rest  and  to  put  them  together  as  the  characteristics  of 
a  class,  and  then  it  groups  together  the  objects  that  pos- 


91 


sess  these,  and  when  it  sees  a  new  object  which  possesses 
them  it  throws  it  into  that  class ;  in  this  way  it  gradual- 
ly arranges  into  a  cosmos  the  chaos  of  perceptions  with 
which  it  began  its  mental  career,  and  infers  law  from 
the  orderly  succession  of  phenomena,  and  the  types  it 
finds  in  nature.  All  this  is  the  work  of  the  consciousness 
in  and  through  the  physical  brain,  but  even  in  this 
working  we  trace  the  presence  of  that  which  the  brain 
does  not  supply.  The  brain  merely  receives  vibrations ; 
the  consciousness  working  in  the  astral  body  changes  the 
vibrations  into  sensations,  and  in  the  mental  body 
changes  the  sensations  into  perceptions,  and  then  carries 
on  all  the  processes  which,  as  just  said,  transform  the 
chaos  into  cosmos.  And  the  consciousness  thus  working 
is,  further,  illuminated  from  above  with  ideas  that  are 
not  fabricated  from  materials  supplied  by  the  physical 
world,  but  are  reflected  into  it  directly  from  the  Uni- 
versal Mind.  The  great  ''laws  of  thought"  regulate  all 
thinking,  and  the  very  act  of  thinking  reveals  their  pre- 
existence,  as  it  is  done  by  them  and  under  them,  and  is 
impossible  without  them. 

It  is  unnecessary  almost  to  remark  that  all  these 
earlier  efforts  of  consciousness  to  work  in  the  physical 
vehicle  are  subject  to  much  error,  both  from  imperfect 
perception  and  from  mistaken  inferences.  Hasty  in- 
ferences, generalizations  from  limited  experience,  viti- 
ate many  of  the  conclusions  arrived  at,  and  the  rules 
of  logic  are  formulated  in  order  to  discipline  the  think- 
ing faculty,  and  to  enable  it  to  avoid  the  fallacies  into 
which  it   constantlv   falls  while   untrained.     But  none 


92 


the  less  the  attempt  to  reason,  however  imperfectly, 
from  one  thing  to  another,  is  a  distinct  mark  of  growth 
in  the  man  himself,  for  it  shows  that  he  is  adding  some- 
thing of  his  own  to  the  information  contributed  from 
outside.  This  working  on  the  collected  materials  has  an 
effect  on  the  physical  vehicle  itself.  When  the  mind 
links  two  perceptions  together,  it  also  sets  up — as  it  is 
causing  corresponding  vibrations  in  the  brain — a  link 
between  the  sets  of  vibrations  from  which  the  percep- 
tions arose.  For  as  the  mind  body  is  thrown  into  activi- 
ty, it  acts  on  the  astral  body,  and  this  again  on  the 
etheric  and  dense  bodies,  and  the  nervous  matter  of  the 
latter  vibrates  under  the  impulses  sent  through;  this 
action  shows  itself  as  electrical  discharges,  and  magnetic 
currents  play  between  molecules  and  groups  of  mole- 
cules, causing  intricate  inter-relations.  These  leave 
what  we  may  call  a  nervous  track,  a  track  along  which 
another  current  will  run  more  easily  than  it  can  run, 
say,  athwart  it,  and  if  a  group  of  molecules  that  were 
concerned  in  a  vibration  should  be  again  made  active 
by  the  consciousness  repeating  the  idea  that  was  im- 
pressed upon  them,  the  disturbance  there  set  up  readily 
runs  along  the  track  formed  between  it  and  another 
group  by  a  previous  linking,  and  calls  that  other  group 
into  activity,  and  it  sends  up  to  the  mind  a  vibration 
which,  after  the  regular  transformations,  presents  itself 
as  an  associated  idea.  Hence  the  great  importance  of 
association,  this  action  of  the  brain  being  sometimes  ex- 
ceedingly troublesome,  as  when  some  foolish  or  ludic- 
rous idea  has  been  linked  with  a  serious  or  a  sacred  one. 


93 


The  consciousness  calls  up  the  sacred  idea  in  order  to 
dwell  upon  it,  and  suddenly,  quite  without  its  consent, 
the  grinning  face  of  the  intruding  idea,  sent  up  by  the 
mechanical  action  of  the  brain,  thrusts  itself  through 
the  doorway  of  the  sanctuary  and  defiles  it.  Wise  men 
pay  attention  to  association,  and  are  careful  how  they 
speak  of  the  most  sacred  things,  lest  some  foolish  and 
ignorant  person  should  make  a  connecting  link  between 
the  holy  and  the  silly  or  the  coarse,  a  link  which  after- 
wards would  be  likely  to  repeat  itself  in  the  conscious- 
ness. Useful  is  the  precept  of  the  great  Jewish  Teacher : 
"Give  not  that  which  is  holy  to  the  dogs,  neither  cast 
ye  your  pearls  before  swine." 

Another  mark  of  progress  appears  when  a  man  be- 
gins to  regulate  his  conduct  by  conclusions  arrived  at 
within,  instead  of  by  impulses  received  from  without. 
He  is  then  acting  from  his  own  store  of  accumulated 
experiences,  remembering  past  happenings,  comparing 
results  obtained  by  different  lines  of  action  in  the 
past,  and  deciding  by  these  as  to  the  line  of  action  he 
will  adopt  in  the  present.  He  is  beginning  to  forecast, 
to  foresee,  to  judge  of  the  future  b}^  the  past,  to  reason 
ahead  by  remembering  what  has  alread}^  occurred,  and 
as  a  man  does  this  there  is  a  distinct  growth  of  him 
as  man.  He  may  still  be  confined  to  functioning  in 
his  physical  brains,  he  may  still  be  inactive  outside  them, 
but  he  is  becoming  a  developing  consciousness  which 
is  beginning  to  behave  as  an  individual,  to  choose  its 
own  road  instead  of  drifting  with  circumstances,  or 
being  forced  along  a  particular  line  of  action  by  some 


94 


pressure  from  without.  The  growth  of  the  man  shows 
itself  in  this  definite  way,  and  he  develops  more  and 
more  of  what  is  called  character,  more  and  more  of  will- 
power. 

Strong-willed  and  weak-willed  persons  are  distin- 
guished by  their  difference  in  this  respect.  The  weak- 
willed  man  is  moved  from  outside,  by  outer  attractions 
and  repulsions,  while  the  strong-willed  man  is  moved 
from  inside,  and  continually  masters  circumstances  by 
bringing  to  bear  upon  them  appropriate  forces,  guided 
by  his  store  of  accumulated  experiences.  This  store, 
which  the  man  has  in  many  lives  gathered  and  accumu- 
lated, becomes  more  and  more  available  as  the  physical 
brains  become  more  trained  and  refined,  and  therefore 
more  receptive :  the  store  is  in  the  man,  but  he  can  only 
use  so  much  of  it  as  he  can  impress  on  the  physical 
consciousness.  The  man  himself  has  the  memory  and 
does  the  reasoning;  the  man  himself  judges,  chooses, 
decides;  but  he  has  to  do  all  this  through  his  physical 
and  etheric  brains ;  he  must  work  and  act  by  way  of  the 
physical  body,  of  the  nervous  mechanism,  and  of  the 
etheric  organism  therewith  connected.  As  the  brain 
becomes  more  impressible,  as  he  improves  its  material 
and  brings  it  more  under  his  control,  he  is  able  to  use 
it  for  better  expression  of  himself. 

How,  then,  shall  we,  the  living  men,  try  to  train  our 
vehicles  of  consciousness,  in  order  that  they  may  serve 
as  better  instruments?  We  are  not  now  studying  the 
physical  development  of  the  vehicle,  but  its  training 
by  the  consciousness  that  uses  it  as  an  instrument  of 


95 


thought.  The  man  decides  that  in  order  to  make  more 
useful  this  vehicle  of  his,  to  the  improvement  of  which 
physically  he  has  already  directed  his  attention,  he  must 
train  it  to  answer  promptly  and  consecutively  to  the  im- 
pulses he  transmits  to  it;  in  order  that  the  brain  may 
respond  consecutively,  he  will  himself  think  consecutive- 
ly, and  so  sending  to  the  brain  sequential  impulses  he  will 
accustom  it  to  work  sequentially  by  linked  groups  of 
molecules,  instead  of  by  haphazard  and  unrelated  vi- 
brations. The  man  initiates,  the  brain  only  imitates, 
and  unconnected,  careless  thinking  sets  up  the  habit  in 
the  brain  of  forming  unconnected  vibratory  groups. 
The  training  has  two  stages ;  the  man,  determining  that 
he  will  think  consecutively,  trains  his  mental  body  to 
link  thought  to  thought  and  not  to  alight  anywhere  in  a 
casual  way ;  and  then,  by  thinking  thus,  he  trains  the  brain 
which  vibrates  in  answer  to  his  thought.  In  this  way  the 
physical  organisms — the  nervous  and  the  etheric  systems 
— get  into  the  habit  of  working  in  a  systematic  way,  and 
when  their  owner  wants  them  they  respond  promptly 
and  in  an  orderly  fashion,  when  he  requires  them  they 
are  ready  to  his  hand,  between  such  a  trained  vehicle 
of  consciousness  and  one  that  is  untrained,  there  is  the 
kind  of  difference  that  there  is  between  the  tools  of  a 
careless  workman,  who  leaves  them  dirty  and  blunt,  un- 
fit for  use,  and  those  of  the  man  who  makes  his  tools 
ready,  sharpens  them  and  cleans  them,  so  that  when 
they  are  wanted  they  are  ready  to  his  hand  and  he  can 
at  once  use  them  for  the  work  demanding  his  attention. 


96 


Thus  should  the  physical  vehicle  be  ready  always  to 
answer  to  the  call  of  the  mind. 

The  result  of  such  continued  working  on  the  phy- 
sical body  will  be  by  no  means  exhausted  in  the  im- 
proved capacity  of  the  brain.  For  every  impulse  sent 
to  the  physical  body  has  had  to  pass  through  the  astral 
vehicle,  and  has  produced  an  effect  upon  it  also.  For, 
as  we  have  seen,  astral  matter  is  far  more  responsive  to 
thought-vibrations  than  is  physical,  and  the  effect  on 
the  astral  body  of  the  course  of  action  we  have  been 
considering  is  proportionally  great.  Under  it  the  astral 
body  assumes  a  definite  outline,  a  well-organized  con- 
dition, such  as  has  already  been  described.  When  a 
man  has  learned  to  dominate  the  brain,  when  he  has 
learned  concentration,  when  he  is  able  to  think  as  he 
likes  and  when  he  likes,  a  corresponding  development 
takes  place  in  what — if  he  be  physically  conscious  of 
it — he  will  regard  as  his  dream  life.  His  dreams  will 
become  vivid,  well-sustained,  rational,  even  instructive. 
The  man  is  beginning  to  function  in  the  second  of  his 
vehicles  of  consciousness,  the  astral  body,  is  entering  the 
second  great  region  or  plane  of  consciousness,  and  is 
acting  there  in  the  astral  vehicle  apart  from  the  physi- 
cal. Let  us  for  a  moment  consider  the  difference  be- 
tween two  men  both  "wide  awake,"  i.e.  functioning  in 
the  physical  vehicle,  one  of  whom  is  only  using  his  astral 
body  unconsciously  as  a  bridge  between  the  mind  and 
the  brain,  and  the  other  of  whom  is  using  it  consciously 
as  a  vehicle.  The  first  sees  in  the  ordinary  and  very 
limited  way,  his  astral  body  not  yet  being  an  effective 


97 


vehicle  of  consciousness ;  the  second  uses  the  astral  vision, 
and  is  no  longer  limited  by  physical  matter;  he  sees 
through  all  physical  bodies,  he  sees  behind  as  well  as  in 
front,  walls  and  other  "opaque"  substances  are  to  him 
transparent  as  glass;  he  sees  astral  forms  and  colors 
also,  auras,  elementals,  and  so  on.  If  he  goes  to  a  con- 
cert, he  sees  glorious  symphonies  of  colors  as  the  music 
swells;  to  a  lecture,  he  sees  the  speaker's  thoughts  in 
color  and  form,  and  so  gains  a  much  more  complete  rep- 
resentation of  his  thoughts  than  is  possible  to  one  who 
hears  only  the  spoken  words.  For  the  thoughts  that 
issue  in  symbols  as  words  go  out  also  as  colored  and 
musical  forms,  and  clothed  in  astral  matter  impress 
themselves  on  the  astral  body.  Where  the  consciousness 
is  fully  awake  in  that  body,  it  receives  and  registers  the 
whole  of  these  additional  impressions,  and  many  persons 
will  find,  if  they  closely  examine  themselves,  that  they  do 
catch  from  a  speaker  a  good  deal  more  than  the  mere 
words  convey,  even  though  they  may  not  have  been 
aware  of  it  at  the  time  when  they  were  listening.  Many 
will  find  in  their  memory  more  than  the  speaker  uttered ; 
sometimes  a  kind  of  suggestion  continuing  the  thought, 
as  though  something  rose  up  round  the  words  and  made 
them  mean  more  than  they  meant  to  the  ear.  This  ex- 
perience shows  that  the  astral  vehicle  is  developing,  and 
as  the  man  pays  attention  to  his  thinking  and  uncon- 
sciously uses  the  astral  body,  it  grows  and  becomes  more 
and  more  organized. 

The  ''unconsciousness"  of  people  during    sleep    is 
due  either  to  the  undevelopment  of  the  astral  body,  or 


98 


to  the  absence  of  connecting  conscious  links  between  it 
and  the  physical  brain.  A  man  uses  his  astral  body 
during  his  waking  consciousness,  sending  mind  currents 
through  the  astral  to  the  physical  brain;  but  when  the 
physical  brain  is  not  in  active  use — the  brain  through 
which  the  man  is  in  the  habit  of  receiving  impressions 
from  without — he  is  like  David  in  the  armor  which  he 
had  not  proved;  he  is  not  so  receptive  to  impressions 
coming  to  him  only  through  the  astral  body,  to  the  in- 
dependent use  of  which  he  is  not  yet  accustomed.  Fur- 
ther, he  may  learn  to  use  it  independently  on  the  astral 
plane,  and  yet  not  know  that  he  has  been  using  it  when 
he  returns  to  the  physical — another  stage  in  the  slow 
progress  of  the  man — and  he  thus  begins  to  employ  it 
in  its  own  world,  before  he  can  make  connections  be- 
tween that  world  and  the  world  below.  Lastly,  he  makes 
those  connections,  and  then  he  passes  in  full  conscious- 
ness from  the  use  of  one  vehicle  to  the  use  of  the  other, 
and  is  free  of  the  astral  world.  He  has  definitely  en- 
larged the  area  of  his  waking  consciousness  to  include 
the  astral  plane,  and  while  in  the  physical  body  his 
astral  senses  are  entirely  at  his  service ;  he  may  be  said 
to  be  living  at  one  and  the  same  time  in  the  two  worlds, 
there  being  no  break,  no  gulf  between  them,  and  he 
walks  the  physical  world  as  a  man  born  blind,  whose  eyes 
have  been  opened. 

In  the  next  stage  of  his  evolution,  the  man  begins 
to  work  consciously  on  the  third,  or  mental  plane ;  he 
has  long  been  working  on  this  plane,  sending  down  from 
it  all  the  thoughts  that  take  such  active  form  in  the 


99 


astral  world  and  find  expression  in  the  physical  world 
through  the  brain.  As  he  becomes  conscious  in  the  mind 
body,  in  his  mental  vehicle,  he  finds  that  when  he  is 
thinking  he  is  creating  forms;  he  becomes  conscious  of 
the  creative  act,  though  he  has  long  been  exercising  the 
power  unconsciously.  The  reader  may  remember  that 
in  one  of  the  letters  quoted  in  the  Occult  World,  a 
Master  speaks  of  every  one  as  making  thought-forms, 
but  draws  the  distinction  between  the  ordinary  man  and 
the  Adept,  that  the  ordinary  man  produces  them  uncon- 
sciously, while  the  Adept  produces  them  consciously. 
(The  word  Adept  is  here  used  in  a  very  wide  sense  to 
include  Initiates  of  various  grades  far  below  that  of  a 
'^ Master.")  At  this  stage  of  a  man's  development,  his 
powers  of  usefulness  very  largely  increase,  for  when  he 
can  consciously  create  and  direct  a  thought-form — an 
artificial  elemental,  as  it  is  often  called — he  can  use  it 
to  do  work  in  places  to  which,  at  the  moment,  it  may  not 
be  convenient  for  him  to  travel  in  his  mind  body.  Thus 
he  can  work  at  a  distance  as  well  as  at  hand,  and  in- 
crease his  usefulness;  he  controls  these  thought-forms 
from  a  distance,  watching  and  guiding  them  as  they 
work  and  making  them  the  agents  of  his  will.  As  the 
mind  body  develops,  and  the  man  lives  and  works  in  it 
consciously,  he  knows  all  the  wider  and  greater  life  he 
lives  on  the  mental  plane ;  while  he  remains  in  the  physi- 
cal body  and  is  conscious  through  that  of  his  physical 
surroundings,  he  is  yet  wide  awake  and  active  in  the 
higher  world,  and  he  does  not  need  to  put  the  physical 
body  to  sleep  in  order  to  enjoy  the  use  of  the  higher 


100 


faculties.  He  habitually  employs  the  mental  sense,  re- 
ceiving by  it  impressions  of  every  kind  from  the  men- 
tal plane,  so  that  all  the  mental  workings  of  others  are 
sensed  by  him  as  he  senses  their  bodily  movements. 

When  the  man  has  reached  this  stage  of  develop- 
ment— a  relatively  high  one,  compared  with  the  average, 
though  low  when  compared  with  that  to  which  he  as- 
pires— he  functions  then  consciously  in  his  third  vehicle, 
or  mind  body,  traces  out  all  he  does  in  it,  and  experiences 
its  powers  and  its  limitations.  Of  necessity,  also,  he 
learns  to  distinguish  between  this  vehicle  he  uses  and 
himself ;  then  he  feels  the  illusory  character  of  the  per- 
sonal ' '  I, "  the  "  I "  of  the  mind  body  and  not  of  the  man, 
and  he  consciously  identifies  himself  with  the  individu- 
ality that  resides  in  that  higher  body,  the  causal,  which 
dwells  on  the  loftier  mental  planes,  those  of  the  arupa 
world.  He  finds  that  he,  the  man,  can  withdraw  himself 
from  the  mind  body,  can  leave  it  behind,  and  rising 
higher  yet  remain  himself;  then  he  knows  the  many 
lives  are  in  verity  but  one  life,  and  that  he,  the  living 
man,  remains  himself  through  all. 

And  now  as  to  the  links — the  links  between  these  dif- 
ferent bodies.  They  exist  at  first  without  coming  into 
the  consciousness  of  the  man.  They  are  there,  otherwise 
he  could  not  pass  from  the  plane  of  the  mind  to  that  of 
the  body,  but  he  is  not  conscious  of  their  existence,  and 
they  are  not  actively  vivified.  They  are  almost  like  what 
are  called  in  the  physical  body  rudimentary  organs. 
Every  student  of  biology  knows  that  rudimentary  or- 
gans are  of  two  kinds ;  one  kind  affords  the  traces  of  the 


101 


stages  through  which  the  body  has  passed  in  evolution, 
while  the  other  gives  hints  of  the  lines  of  future  growth. 
These  organs  exist  but  they  do  not  function;  their  ac- 
tivity in  the  physical  body  is  either  of  the  past  or  of  the 
future,  dead  or  unborn.  The  links  which  I  venture  by 
analogy  to  call  rudimentary  organs  of  the  second  kind, 
connect  the  dense  and  etheric  bodies  with  the  astral,  the 
astral  with  the  mind  body,  the  mind  body  with  the  caus- 
al. They  exist,  but  they  have  to  be  brought  into  activ- 
ity; that  is,  they  have  to  be  developed,  and  like  their 
physical  types,  they  can  only  be  developed  by  use.  The 
life  current  flows  through  them,  the  mind  current  flows 
through  them,  and  thus  they  are  kept  alive  and  nourish- 
ed ;  but  they  are  only  gradually  brought  into  functioning 
activity  as  the  man  fixes  his  attention  on  them  and 
brings  his  will  to  bear  on  their  development.  The  action 
of  the  will  begins  to  vivify  these  rudimentary  links,  and 
step  by  step,  very  slowly  perhaps,  they  begin  to  function ; 
the  man  begins  to  use  them  for  the  passage  of  his  con- 
sciousness from  vehicle  to  vehicle. 

In  the  physical  body  there  are  nervous  centers,  little 
groups  of  nervous  cells,  and  both  impacts  from  without 
and  impulses  from  the  brain  pass  through  these  centers. 
If  one  of  these  is  out  of  order  then  at  once  disturbances 
arise  and  pliysical  consciousness  is  disturbed.  There  are 
analogous  centers  in  the  astral  body,  but  in  the  unde- 
veloped man  they  are  rudimentary  and  do  not  function. 
These  are  links  between  the  physical  and  the  astral 
bodies,  between  the  astral  and  the  mind  bodies,  and  as 
evolution  proceeds  they  are  vivified  by  the  will,  setting 


102 


free  and  guiding  the  ' '  serpent-fire, ' '  called  Kundalini  in 
Indian  books.  The  preparatory  stage  for  the  direct  action 
that  liberates  Kundalini  is  the  training  and  purifying 
of  the  vehicles,  for  if  this  be  not  thoroughly  accomplish- 
ed the  fire  is  a  destructive  instead  of  a  vivifying  energy. 
That  is. why  I  have  laid  so  much  stress  on  purification 
and  urge  it  as  a  necessary  preliminary  for  all  true  Yoga, 
When  a  man  has  rendered  himself  fit  to  safely  re- 
ceive assistance  in  the  vivifying  of  these  links,  such  as- 
sistance comes  to  him  as  a  matter  of  course  from  those 
who  are  ever  seeking  opportunities  to  aid  the  earnest 
and  unselfish  aspirant.  Then,  one  day,  the  man  finds 
himself  slipping  out  of  the  physical  body  while  he  is 
wide  awake,  and  without  any  break  in  consciousness  he 
discovers  himself  to  be  free.  When  this  has  occurred  a 
few  times  the  passage  from  vehicle  to  vehicle  becomes 
familiar  and  easy.  When  the  astral  body  leaves  the  phy- 
sical in  sleep  there  is  a  brief  period  of  unconsciousness, 
and  even  when  the  man  is  functioning  actively  on  the 
astral  plane,  he  fails  to  bridge  over  that  unconsciousness 
on  his  return.  Unconscious  as  he  leaves  the  body,  he  will 
probably  be  unconscious  as  he  re-enters  it;  there  may 
be  full  and  vivid  consciousness  on  the  astral  plane,  and 
yet  a  complete  blank  may  be  all  that  represents  it  in  the 
physical  brain.  But  when  the  man  leaves  the  body 
in  waking  consciousness,  having  developed  the  links  be- 
tween the  vehicles  into  functional  activity,  he  has  bridg- 
ed the  gulf ;  for  him  it  is  a  gulf  no  longer,  and  his  con- 
sciousness passes  swiftly  from  one  plane  to  the  other, 
and  he  knows  himself  as  the  same  man  on  both. 


103 


The  more  the  physical  brain  is  trained  to  answer 
to  the  vibrations  from  the  mind  body,  the  more  is  the 
bridging  of  the  gulf  between  day  and  night  facilitated. 
The  brain  becomes  more  and  more  the  obedient  in- 
strument of  the  man,  carrying  on  its  activities  under 
the  impulses  from  his  will,  and  like  a  well-broken  horse 
answering  to  the  lightest  touch  of  hand  or  knee.  The 
astral  world  lies  open  to  the  man  who  has  thus  unified 
the  two  lower  vehicles  of  consciousness,  and  it  belongs 
to  him  with  all  its  possibilities,  with  all  its  wider  powers, 
its  greater  opportunities  of  doing  service  and  of  render- 
ing help.  Then  comes  the  joy  of  carrying  aid  to  suf- 
ferers who  are  unconscious  of  the  agent  though  they 
feel  the  relief,  of  pouring  balm  into  wounds  that  then 
seem  to  heal  of  themselves,  of  lifting  burdens  that  be- 
come miraculously  light  to  the  aching  shoulders  on  which 
they  pressed  so  heavily. 

More  than  this  is  needed  to  bridge  over  the  gulf  be- 
tween life  and  life ;  to  carry  memory  through  day  and 
night  unbrokenly  merely  means  that  the  astral  body 
is  functioning  perfectly,  and  that  the  links  between  it 
and  the  physical  are  in  full  working  order.  If  a  man 
is  to  bridge  over  the  gulf  between  life  and  life  he  must 
do  very  much  more  than  act  in  full  consciousness  in  the 
astral  body,  and  more  than  act  consciously  in  the  mind 
body;  for  the  mind  body  is  composed  of  the  materials 
of  the  lower  planes  of  the  manasic  world,  and  reincar- 
nation does  not  take  place  from  them.  The  mind  body 
disintegrates  in  due  course,  like  the  astral  and  physical 
vehicles,  and  cannot  carry  anything  across.     The  whole 


104 


question  on  which  memory  of  past  lives  turns  is  this: 
Can  the  man,  or  can  he  not  function  on  the  higher  planes 
of  the  manasic  world  in  his  causal  body  ?  It  is  the  causal 
body  that  passes  from  life  to  life ;  it  is  in  the  causal 
body  that  everything  is  stored ;  it  is  in  the  causal  body 
that  all  experience  remains,  for  into  it  the  consciousness 
is  drawn  up,  and  from  its  plane  is  the  descent  made  in- 
to re-birth.  Let  us  follow  the  stages  of  the  life  out  of 
the  physical  world,  and  see  how  far  the  sway  of  King 
Death  extends.  The  man  draws  himself  away  from  the 
dense  part  of  the  physical  body;  it  drops  off  him,  goes 
to  pieces,  and  is  restored  to  the  physical  world ;  nothing 
remains  in  which  the  magnetic  link  of  memory  can  in- 
here. He  is  then  in  the  etheric  part  of  the  physical 
body,  but  in  the  course  of  a  few  hours  he  shakes  that 
off,  and  it  is  resolved  into  its  elements.  No  memory  then 
connected  with  the  etheric  brain  will  help  him  to  bridge 
the  gulf.  He  passes  on  into  the  astral  world,  remaining 
there  till  he  similiarly  shakes  off  his  astral  body,  and 
leaves  it  behind  as  he  had  left  the  physical ;  the  ' '  astral 
corpse,"  in  its  turn,  disintegrates,  restores  its  materials 
to  the  astral  world,  and  breaks  up  all  that  might  serve 
as  basis  for  the  magnetic  links  necessary  for  memory. 
He  goes  onward  in  his  mind  body  and  dwells  on  the  rupa 
levels  of  Devachan,  living  there  for  hundreds  of  years 
working  up  faculties,  enjoying  fruit.  But  from  this 
mind  body  also  he  withdraws  when  the  time  is  ripe, 
taking  from  it  to  carry  on  into  the  body  that  endures 
the  essence  of  all  that  he  has  gathered  and  assimilated. 
He  leaves  the  mind  body  behind  him,  to  disintegrate 


105 


after  the  fashion  of  his  denser  vehicles,  for  the  matter 
of  it — subtle  as  it  is  from  our  standpoint — is  not  subtle 
enough  to  pass  onward  to  the  higher  planes  of  the 
manasic  world.  It  has  to  be  shaken  off,  to  be  left  to  go 
back  into  the  materials  of  its  own  region,  once  more  a 
resolution  of  the  combination  into  its  elements.  All 
the  way  up  the  man  is  shaking  off  body  after  body,  and 
onl}^  on  reaching  the  arupa  planes  of  the  manasic  world 
can  he  be  said  to  have  passed  beyond  the  regions  over 
which  the  disintegrating  sceptre  of  Death  has  sway.  He 
passes  finally  out  of  his  dominions,  dwelling  in  the  causal 
body  over  which  Death  has  no  power,  and  in  which  he 
stores  up  all  that  he  has  gathered.  Hence  its  very  name 
of  causal  body,  since  all  causes  that  effect  future  incar- 
nations reside  in  it.  He  must  then  begin  to  act  in  full 
consciousness  on  the  arupa  levels  of  the  manasic  world 
in  his  causal  body  ere  he  can  bring  memory  across  the 
gulf  of  death.  An  undeveloped  soul,  entering  that  lofty 
region,  cannot  keep  consciousness  there;  he  enters  it, 
carrying  up  all  the  germs  of  his  qualities;  there  is  a 
touch,  a  flash  of  consciousness  embracing  past  and  fu- 
ture, and  the  dazzled  Ego  sinks  downwards  toward  re- 
birth. He  carries  the  germs  in  this  causal  body  and 
throws  outward  on  each  plane  those  that  belong  to  it; 
they  gather  to  themselves  matters  severally  befitting 
them.  Thus  on  the  rupa  levels  of  the  lower  manasic 
world  the  mental  germs  draw  round  them  the  matter  of 
those  levels  to  form  the  new  mind  body,  and  the  matter 
thus  gathered  shows  the  mental  characteristics  given 
to  it  by  the  germ  within  it,  as  the  acorn  develops  into  an 


106 


oak  by  gathering  into  it  suitable  materials  from  soil  and 
atmosphere.  The  acorn  cannot  develop  into  a  birch  or 
a  cedar,  but  only  into  an  oak,  and  so  the  mental  germ 
must  develop  after  its  own  nature  and  none  other.  Thus 
does  Karma  work  in  the  building  of  the  vehicles,  and 
the  man  has  the  harvest  of  which  he  sowed  the  seed. 
The  germ  thrown  out  from  the  causal  body  can  only 
grow  after  its  kind,  attracting  to  itself  the  grade  of  mat- 
ter that  belongs  to  it,  arranging  that  matter  in  its  char- 
acteristic form,  so  that  it  produces  the  replica  of  the 
quality  the  man  made  in  the  past.  As  he  comes  into 
the  astral  world,  the  germs  are  thrown  out  that  belong 
to  that  world,  and  they  draw  round  themselves  suitable 
astral  materials  and  elemental  essences.  Thus  reappear 
the  appetites,  emotions,  and  passions  belonging  to  the 
desire-body,  or  astral  body,  of  the  man,  reformed  in  this 
fashion  on  his  arrival  on  the  astral  plane.  If  then  con- 
sciousness of  past  lives  is  to  remain,  carried  through  all 
these  processes  and  all  these  worlds,  it  must  exist  in 
full  activity  on  that  high  plane  of  causes,  the  plane  of 
the  causal  body.  People  do  not  remember  their  past 
lives  because  they  are  not  yet  conscious  in  the  causal 
body  as  a  vehicle;  it  has  not  developed  functional  ac- 
tivity of  its  own.  It  is  there,  the  essence  of  their  lives, 
their  real  ' '  I, "  that  from  which  all  proceeds,  but  it  does 
not  yet  actively  function;  it  is  not  yet  self-conscious, 
though  unconsciously  active,  and  until  it  is  self-con- 
scious, fully  self-conscious,  the  memory  cannot  pass  from 
plane  to  plane  and  therefore  from  life  to  life.  As  the 
man  advances,  flashes  of  consciousness  break  forth  that 


107 


illumine  fragments  of  the  past,  but  these  flashes  need  to 
change  to  a  steady  light  ere  any  consecutive  memory 
can  arise. 

It  may  be  asked:  Is  it  possible  to  encourage  the  re- 
currence of  such  flashes?  Is  it  possible  for  people  to 
hasten  this  gradually  growing  activity  of  consciousness 
on  the  higher  planes  ?  The  lower  man  may  labor  to  this 
end,  if  he  has  patience  and  courage ;  he  may  try  to  live 
more  and  more  in  the  permanent  self,  to  withdraw 
thought  and  energy  more  and  more,  so  far  as  interest 
is  concerned,  from  the  trivialities  and  impermanences 
of  ordinary  life.  I  do  not  mean  that  a  man  should  be- 
come dreamy,  abstracted,  and  wandering,  a  most  in- 
efficient member  of  the  home  and  of  society ;  on  the  con- 
trary, every  claim  that  the  world  has  on  him  will  be  dis- 
charged, and  discharged  the  more  perfectly  because  of 
the  greatness  of  the  man  who  is  doing  it;  he  cannot  do 
things  as  clumsil}^  and  imperfectly  as  the  less  developed 
man  may  do  them,  for  to  him  duty  is  duty,  and  as  long 
as  any  one  or  anything  has  a  claim  upon  him  the  debt 
must  be  paid  to  the  uttermost  farthing ;  every  duty  will 
be  fulfilled  as  perfectly  as  he  can  fulfill  it,  with  his  best 
faculties,  his  best  attention.  But  his  interest  will  not 
be  in  these  things,  his  thoughts  will  not  be  bound  to 
their  results ;  the  instant  that  the  duty  is  performed  and 
he  is  released,  his  thoughts  will  fly  back  to  the  permanent 
life,  will  rise  to  the  higher  level  with  upward-striving 
energy,  and  he  will  begin  to  live  there  and  to  rate  at 
their  true  worthlessness  the  trivialities  of  the  worldly 
life.     As  he  steadily  does  this,  and  seeks  to  train  him- 


108 


self  to  high  and  abstract  thinking,  he  will  begin  to  vivify 
the  higher  links  in  consciousness  and  begin  to  bring  into 
this  lower  life  the  consciousness  that  is  himself. 

A  man  is  one  and  the  same  man  on  whatever  plane 
he  may  be  functioning,  and  his  triumph  is  when  he 
functions  on  all  the  five  planes  in  unbroken  conscious- 
ness. Those  whom  we  call  the  Masters,  the  ''Men  made 
perfect,"  function  in  Their  waking  consciousness,  not 
only  on  the  three  lower  planes,  but  on  the  fourth  plane 
— that  plane  of  unity  spoken  of  in  the  Mdndukyopani- 
shad  as  the  Turiya,  and  on  that  yet  above  it,  the  plane 
of  Nirvana.  In  them  evolution  is  completed,  this  cycle 
has  been  trodden  to  its  close,  and  what  they  are  all  in 
time  shall  be  who  are  climbing  slowly  upwards.  This  is 
the  unification  of  consciousness;  the  vehicles  remain  for 
use,  but  no  longer  are  able  to  imprison,  and  the  man 
uses  any  one  of  his  bodies  according  to  the  work  that  he 
has  to  do. 

In  this  way  matter,  time,  and  space  are  conquered, 
and  their  barriers  cease  to  exist  for  the  unified  man. 
He  has  found  in  climbing  upwards  that  they  are  less 
and  less  barriers  in  each  stage ;  even  on  the  astral  plane 
matter  is  much  less  of  a  division  than  it  is  down  here, 
separating  him  from  his  brothers  far  less  effectually. 
Traveling  in  the  astral  body  is  so  swift  that  space  and 
time  may  be  said  to  be  practically  conquered,  for  al- 
though the  man  knows  he  is  passing  through  space  it 
is  passed  through  so  rapidly  that  its  power  to  divide 
friend  from  friend  is  lost.  Even  that  first  conquest  sets 
at  nought  physical  distance.    When  he  rose  to  the  men- 


109 


tal  world  he  found  another  power  his;  he  thought  of  a 
place:  he  was  there;  he  thought  of  a  friend:  the  friend 
was  before  him.  Even  on  the  third  plane  consciousness 
transcends  the  barriers  of  matter,  space,  and  time,  and  is 
present  anywhere  at  will.  All  things  that  are  seen  are 
seen  at  once,  the  moment  attention  is  turned  to  them; 
all  that  is  heard  is  heard  at  a  single  impression;  space, 
matter,  and  time,  as  known  in  the  lower  worlds,  have 
disappeared,  sequence  no  longer  exists  in  the  ''eternal 
now."  As  he  rises  yet  higher,  barriers  within  con- 
sciousness also  fall  away,  and  he  knows  himself  to  be 
one  with  other  consciousnesses,  other  living  things;  he 
can  think  as  they  think,  feel  as  they  feel,  know  as  they 
know.  He  can  make  their  limitations  his  for  the  mo- 
ment, in  order  that  he  may  understand  exactly  how  they 
are  thinking,  and  yet  have  his  own  consciousness.  He 
can  use  his  own  greater  knowledge  for  the  helping  of 
the  narrower  and  more  restricted  thought,  identifying 
himself  with  it  in  order  gently  to  enlarge  its  bounds. 
He  takes  on  altogether  new  functions  in  nature  when  he 
is  no  longer  divided  from  others,  but  realizes  the  Self 
that  is  one  in  all  and  sends  down  his  energies  from  the 
plane  of  unity.  With  regard  even  to  the  lower  animals 
he  is  able  to  feel  how  the  world  exists  to  them,  so  that  he 
can  give  exactly  the  help  they  need,  and  can  supply  the 
aid  after  which  they  are  blindly  groping.  Hence  his 
conquest  is  not  for  himself  but  for  all,  and  he  wins 
wider  powers  only  to  place  them  at  the  service  of  all 
lower  in  the  scale  of  evolution  than  himself;  in  this 
way  he  becomes  self-conscious  in  all  the  world;  for  this 


110 


he  learned  to  thrill  responsive  to  every  cry  of  pain,  to 
every  throb  of  joy  or  sorrow.  All  is  reached,  all  is 
gained,  and  the  Master  is  the  man  ''who  has  nothing 
more  to  learn."  By  this  we  mean  not  that  all  possible 
knowledge  is  at  any  given  moment  within  His  con- 
sciousness, but  that  so  far  as  this  stage  of  evolution  is 
concerned  there  is  nothing  that  to  Him  is  veiled,  nothing 
of  which  He  does  not  become  fully  conscious  when  He 
turns  His  attention  to  it ;  within  this  circle  of  evolution 
of  everything  that  lives — and  all  things  live — there  is 
nothing  He.  cannot  understand,  and  therefore  nothing 
that  He  cannot  help. 

That  is  the  ultimate  triumph  of  man.  All  that  I 
have  spoken  of  would  be  worthless,  trivial,  were  it  gained 
for  the  narrow  self  we  recognize  as  self  down  here  ; 
all  the  steps,  my  reader,  to  which  I  have  been  trying 
to  win  you  would  not  be  worth  the  taking  did  they  set 
you  at  last  on  an  isolated  pinnacle,  apart  from  all  the 
sinning,  suffering  selves,  instead  of  leading  you  to  the 
heart  of  things,  where  they  and  you  are  one.  The  con- 
sciousness of  the  Master  stretches  itself  out  in  any  direc- 
tion in  which  He  sends  it,  assimilates  itself  with  any 
point  to  which  He  directs  it,  knows  anything  which  He 
wills  to  know;  and  all  this  in  order  that  He  may  help 
perfectly,  that  there  may  be  nothing  that  He  cannot 
feel,  nothing  that  He  cannot  foster,  nothing  that  He 
cannot  strengthen,  nothing  that  He  cannot  aid  in  its 
evolution;  to  Him  the  whole  world  is  one  vast  evolving 
whole,  and  His  place  in  it  is  that  of  a  helper  of  evolu- 
tion ;  He  is  able  to  identify  Himself  witli  any  step,  and 


Ill 


at  that  step  to  give  the  aid  that  is  needed.  He  helps 
the  elementary  kingdoms  to  evolve  downwards,  and  each 
in  its  own  way,  the  evolution  of  the  minerals,  plants, 
animals,  and  men,  and  He  helps  them  all  as  Himself. 
For  the  glory  of  His  life  is  that  all  is  Himself  and  yet 
He  can  aid  all,  in  the  very  helping  realizing  as  Himself 
that  which  He  aids. 

The  mystery  how  this  can  be  gradually  unfolds  it- 
self as  man  develops,  and  consciousness  widens  to  em- 
brace more  and  more  while  yet  becoming  more  vivid, 
more  vital,  and  without  losing  knowledge  of  itself.  When 
the  point  has  become  the  sphere,  the  sphere  finds  itself 
to  be  the  point;  each  point  contains  everything  and 
knows  itself  one  with  every  other  point;  the  outer  is 
found  to  be  only  the  reflection  of  the  inner;  the  Reality 
is  the  One  Life,  and  the  difference  an  illusion  that  is 
overcome. 


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